LIBRARY i F CONGRESS. 
Shelf X-2.- 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



JESUS 



HIS OPINIONS AND CHARACTER 



THE NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES 



A LAYMAN 

%^ Sc*W SoJUU* 

'Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another ? " — Matt, xi., 3 




BOSTON 

GEO. H. ELLIS, r 4 i FRANKLIN STREET 

1883 






Copyright, 1883, 
By GEORGE H. ELLIS. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

SOURCES OF EVIDENCE, 1 1-43. 

Brief risumioi what is known of the life of Jesus, 11, 12. He did 
not write, nor authorize the writing of his life, or of his doctrine, 12. Few 
traces of the human career or character of Jesus in the Pauline and other 
canonical Epistles, 13, 14; in the "Acts of the Apostles," 15, 16. Distinct 
and irreconcilable traditions of Jesus in the first three and in the fourth 
Gospels, 16. Story of Jesus as told in the latter, 17-22. Story of Jesus as 
told by Matthew, 23-28. These narratives but questionable data of history ; 
intrinsic improbability of the events told in them, and their inconsistency 
with other events in the same narratives, 29. Hence an unreasonable srep- 
ticsm as to the existence of Jesus, 29. Influence of Christianity upon 
civilization a personal influence, and implies a Christ, 30. Slight impression 
of deeds and sayings of Jesus on the mind of Paul, 30. Slight mention of 
him by Josephus, 30. What the historic Gospels, the apostles, and primi- 
tive disciples concur in imputing to Jesus probably formed a part of his 
faith and philosophy, 31. Reasons why the Fourth Gospel cannot be con- 
sidered historical, 32. Question of miracles an embarrassment, rather than 
an assistance to modern faith, 33. Substantial variances between the First 
and the Fourth Gospels, 34.. "Jesus gained more influence by intellectual 
than by magical powers, 35. Matthew Arnold's adhesion to the Fourth 
Gospel considered, 36-38. Few points of agreement, many points of dis- 
agreement, between Fourth and Synoptic Gospels, 38. Arrest and condem- 
nation of Jesus as told in Fourth Gospel incredible, 3S-40. Mainly 
concurrent statements of Synoptic Gospels concerning the same natural 
and probable, 41, 42. The general historic credibility of the Synoptic Gos- 
pels assumed, 43. 



CHAPTER II. 

DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS, 44-69. 

Ideas and character of Jesus must be considered in their relation to his 
dominant idea, 44. His dominant idea, the kingdom of heaven, 45. Promi- 
nence of this idea in his preaching, 45. His ethical precepts relate to it, 45. 
The kingdom of heaven at hand the sole message of his sent-out disciples, 
47. Significance of his title of Son of Man, 47, 48. Kingdom of heaven the 
chief theme of the parables, 50. Disclosures in the conversation at Cassarea- 
Philippi, 51. Symbolic character of the procession of palms, 52, 53. Lit- 
eral exposition of the doctrine of the kingdom of heaven in Matthew xxiv., 



ii CONTENTS 

xxv., 54-56. Kingdom of heaven most prominent in the discourse of Jesus, 
56, 57. The idea not wholly original with him, 57. The expectation of 
the people of his time with reference to it, 57, 58. Derived from the 
national prophecies, 58. Passages in the law and in the temple songs con- 
sidered Messianic, 5S, 59. Restored kingdom and power of Israel mentioned 
by Isaiah, 59. By Jeremiah, 59. By Ezekiel and other prophets, 60. The 
promised era of peace was the peace of conquest — of the subjection and 
punishment of enemies, 61-63. Real nature of the prophetic writings 
political and didactic, and relating to the exigencies of the times, 63-65. 
Not predictions of future events, 66. The prophetic king to come not 
immortal, 67. The Jews of the time of Jesus believed the prophecies to be 
predictions of a restored monarchy, and of a domination by their nation of 
other people, 67, 6S. How far Jesus shared the belief, 6S, 69. 



CHAPTER III. 

DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS, CONTINUED, 7I-96. 

Didactic method of Jesus, 71. His Messianic character gradually and 
diffidently assumed, 71. The conquering and the suffering Messiah of the 
prophets, 72. Jesus considered th it there were not two Messiahs, but two 
comings of one Messiah, 72. Popular idea an empire of Israel ; Jesus' idea 
an empire of the elect, 73-75. The popular expectation was of material 
prosperity, that of Jesus of spiritual, 76. The retribution in the dispensa- 
tion of Jesus was more complete than in the prophetic. The former had 
no mercy for enemies who submitted, 76, 77. The prophetic kingdom a 
kingdom of the priesthood and of the permanence of the Mosaic laws, that 
of Jesus ignored the priesthood and the ecclesiastical laws, 77. Why Jesus 
believed the kingdom of heaven at hand, 78. Are the prophecies of Jesus 
capable of a purely spiritual interpretation ? 79-81. The sense in which his 
first followers believed those prophecies, 82. The kingdom of heaven in the 
writings of Paul, 82-86. Paul's peculiar theory of the resurrection, 86. 
The kingdom of heaven in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 88. In the Epistle 
of James, 88, 89. Of Peter, 89, 90. Of John, 90, 91. Fuller details of 
the kingdom of heaven in the Apocalypse, 91-93. Wherein it differed 
from the original tradition, 93, 94. Disappointment of the Christian ex- 
pectation, 95. Recapitulation of the argument that the kingdom of heaven 
was the dominant idea of Jesus, 95, 96. 



CHAPTER IV. 

POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS, 97-126. 

Indicated generally in his dominant idea, 97. He repressed the struggle 
for life, 98. Radical character of his reforms, 99. His hostility to existing 
governments, 100. His national prejudices not strong, 100, 101. Did not 
sympathize with popular aspirations for independence, 102. His ideas of 
poverty and wealth, 103; as disclosed in his precepts and parables, 104- 
106. Not mere sentiments, 106. He practised his own principles, 107. 
He required their practice from his followers, 10S. The wealthy young man, 
109. His antipathy to the rich reappears in the Epistle of James, 109. Sen- 
timent of justice not strong in Jesus, no. Real import of parable of Dives 
and Lazarus, 112, 113. Worldly occupations of men seemed impious to 
Jesus, 114. His ideas of property quite consistent with and explicable by 



CONTENTS 111 

his dominant idea, 115-118. Necessity of returning to secular pursuits and 
cares after defeat of expectation of the end of the world, 117. Paul the 
first to abate the rigor of the political ideas of Jesus, 118. Communistic 
character of the first Christian society, 120. The Church at Jerusalem 
maintained by subsidies from heathen converts, 121. Traces of the early 
communism surviving in monastic establishments and the minor sects, 122. 
Reversed attitude of the modern Church, 123. Effect of poverty and wealth 
upon personal character considered, 123-125. Antagonism betwixt ideas of 
Jesus and those of his own race, 126. 

CHAPTER V. 

ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS, I27-160. 

Absence of a systematized statement of his ethical ideas, 127. His 
generalizations sometimes inconsequential and contradictory, 128. Instances 
given, 128-130. Two aspects of divine beneficence, 131, 132. Difficulty of 
reconciling the two characters, 132. Blessedness of sorrow, 133. Salutary 
influence of this lesson, 134. Blessedness of forgiveness, 135. Strict ideas 
of sexual purity, 136. Counter influence of Mohammedanism, 137. Jesus 
no ascetic, 138. Influence respectively of the temperance of Islam and the 
chastity of Christianity, 139. Murder and all personal injuries condemned 
in the malice that incites them, 140. Difficulty of controlling anger, 140. 
Not always himself true to his lesson, 141. Effect on character of indis- 
criminate almsgiving, 142. Provisional application of this lesson, 143. 
Jesus ignored the rights of property, which were the basis of the older 
cultus, 145. Major and minor morals distinguished, 146. The proscrip- 
tion of all oaths considered, 146, 147. Uncertain attitude toward the 
Mosaic ritual, 14S. Omissions in the ethical code of Jesus, 148. Patri- 
otism, 149. The marital, parental, and filial duties, 149. Defect supplied in 
ethics of Paul, 150. The Teutonic influence on manners, 150. Pity and 
tenderness toward animals not characteristic of the ethical system of Jesus, 
151. Rule of conduct toward brethren different from the rule toward 
other men, 152. Rise thence of ecclesiastical government, 153. How 
far the ethical ideas of Jesus were original, 153. The sect of the Essenes 
and their origin, 154. Respects in which their ideas differed from those of 
Jesus. Their regard of the old scriptures and the Sabbath, 154; of labor, 
155. Their strong sentiment of justice, 155. Their separation from the 
wicked, their prayers, 156. Their washings and baptisms, 156, 157. Their 
hostility to war and slavery, 157. Their veneration of age, 158. Respects 
in which their principles agreed with the doctrines of Jesus, 158. Their 
requirement of virginity, 158. They forbade oaths, 159. They inculcated 
love of God; they confined their most esoteric doctrines to the brother- 
hood; they required the extirpation of anger; they forbade scientific studies; 
they expected the Messiah, and the kingdom of heaven, 160. Jesus accepted, 
modified, and gave currency to the ideas of the Essenes, 160. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS, l6l-l86. 

Difficulty of generalizing them, 161. The poetic and philosophic 
temperament incompatible, 162. Jesus taught that God was beneficent 
according to the human standard, 162. The fatherhood of God a psycholog- 
ical fact, 163. Difference between his and the Jewish idea of a divine 
paternity, 164. Courses of nature the appointment of God, 164. Opposite 



IV CONTENTS 

view of nature in Johannic Gospel, 165, 166. Doctrine of Holy Ghost sug- 
gested, not developed, by Jesus, 167. Exigencies developing the doctrine, 
167, 168. How the word "spirit" is used by Paul, also by John, 169. New 
occasions required new revelations, 170. Christian ideas not derived from 
Jesus, 171. Words, which denote the intrinsic character of men, 172. The 
aversion of Jesus for bad men; his tolerance of publicans and sinners, 173. 
He believed in devilish possession, 174. Illustrations of his belief from the 
Gospels, 175. His scheme of nature, 176. The evil in the world due in 
part to devilish possession, 177. Wicked men children of the devil, 177, 
178. The fatherhood of God as held by Jesus and by the Israelites, 179. 
His feeling toward men not disciples, 1S0. His opposition to the distinc- 
tions of rank, 181. No service of duty entitled to reward, 183. Self-depre- 
ciation and self-consciousness how regarded by him, 184. The import of all 
serious speech, and the indications of the moral sympathies, 185. 



CHAPTER VII. 

RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF JESUS, 187-208. 

Whether there be gods a question of philosophy, — how to placate 
them a question of religion, 187. Worship corresponds to the conception 
of God, 187. With the beginning of the moral sense, righteousness became 
a service of worship, 18S. Pagan idea of God human and cheerful; He- 
brew idea, pure and stern, 188, 189. Scepticism as to Israel being the 
chosen people in certain of the old scriptures, 190. Jesus thought the rela- 
tion of Israel to God was a conditional and temporary one, 191, 192. His 
assumption of authority over the Mosaic law, 192.' His neglect of Sab- 
bath observance, 193. His position as to the Mosaic code uncertain, 194. 
Prayer not a service of worship, 195, 196; but a familiar intercourse, 197. 
His aversion to fasting, 198. His slight regard of baptism, 199. His 
memorial service called the Last Supper, 200. His form of prayer con- 
sidered, 202. The thoroughness of his precepts, 203. The forgiving and 
vindictive aspects of the divine character, 205. He placed no obstacles in 
the way of passing from the evil to the good character and state, 206. How 
the apprehension of the end of the world modified his religious ideas, 207, 
208. Sudden conversions come to impetuous natures; growth the general 
law of righteousness, 208. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

HIS IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE, 209-236. 

The question of a future life a question of philosophy, 209. The final 
destiny of men not beyond ultimate discovery, 210. Why religion has 
asserted exclusive jurisdiction over this subject, 21 r. The jews had origi- 
nally no ideas of immortality, 212. The Jews acquired belief in immor- 
tality during their captivity, 215. An established belief before the time of 
Jesus, 216. Popular opinions concerning immortality among the Jews and 
among the Greeks and Romans contrasted, 216, 217. Traces of the beliefs 
of the time of Jesus among his own people, outside of his own teaching, 
217-220. Idea "of day of judgment and its origin, 220, 221. Ideas of Jesus 
as to the future life traced in his literal and allegoric teachings, 221, 222. 
The resurrection a terror to all but the righteous, 223. Deplorable condi 



CONTENTS V 

tion of the non-elect dead, 224-226. Imagination and tradition the source of 
all our knowledge of a future life, 227-229. Jesus' method of investigating 
the question philosophical and human, 229. In the Fourth Gospel, his 
teachings are from intuition and direct knowledge, 230, 231. In the Synoptic 
Gospels, quite otherwise, 232. Paul's revelations much more detailed and 
particular, 233. The colloquy with the Sadducees concerning the resurrec- 
tion, 234, 235. The scheme of a future life in the mind of Jesus modified 
and supplanted by his dominant idea of a kingdom of heaven, 236. 



CHAPTER IX. 

LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES, 237-276. 

Considerable part of events related in Synoptic Gospels improbable, 
237. The miracles, if performed, must be proved by testimony of the 
highest validity, 238. Paul's character as a witness, 239. Did he witness 
the crucifixion ? 240. Controversy in the early Church as to his apostleship, 
241. His silence upon the miracles, 242. Did the divine power attributed 
by Paul to Jesus imply a power to work miracles ? 243, 244. Silence of 
Paul concerning miracles irreconcilable with the Johannic miracles of Jesus 
in Jerusalem, where Paul lived, 244, 245. No mention of Jesus' miracles in 
the canonical Epistles, 246. Testimony of the Synoptic Gospels. Matthew 
and Mark evidently copy each other, 247. None of the Gospels extant 
while Paul lived and wrote, 24S. At best, the evidence of the Gospels is of 
a low grade, 249. Detail of miracle-working as given by Matthew and 
Mark, 250-252. Difficulties encountered in giving it credence, 253-255. 
Detail of miracle-working as given by Luke, 255-257. Discrepancies in 
the testimony, — how far they are explicable, how far irreconcilable, 25S-260. 
Paley's principle of weighing testimony applied to the testimony of the evan- 
gelists, 261. The miracles of the Fourth Gospel explained, 262-264. How 
the evangelical narratives were created, 264. Multiplicity of Gospels, and 
rule of selection among them, 265, 266. Such miracles as the evangelists 
record would, if performed, have obtained some mention in secular history, 
267. They would have produced greater effects upon the communities 
where performed than the evangelists describe, 268-270. Jesus probably 
^had a certain magnetic power of allaying nervous disorders, out of which 
the story of the miracles grew, 270-272. What the exorcization of devils 
actually was, 273. The raising of the ruler's daughter — the foundation of 
all the stories of raising the dead — not miraculous, 275. The inconsistent 
reasons given for the cessation of the miraculous powers of Jesus, 276. 
The real reason surmised, 276. 



CHAPTER X. 

ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH OF JESUS, 277-33I. 

Whatever may have been the providential plan, causes of his death to be 
sought in the order of known events, 277, 278. How came he to be obnox- 
ious to his nation, 278; not as a healer of the sick, 279; not as a teacher 
of a sublime system of ethics, 279, 280; not by his claim to be the Messiah, 
281-2S3. Tolerant attitude of scribes and Pharisees toward Jesus, 284. 
His intolerant attitude toward them, 284-286. His first contact with them 
in Galilee, 286. Jesus in no peril while he stayed in Galilee, 287. He went 
to Jerusalem, in fulfilment of prophecy, to be put to death, 287-290. Offen- 



VI CONTENTS 

siveness to the priests and rulers of the procession of palms, and the driv- 
ing out of the sellers of victims from the temple, 290, 291. The spirit in 
which Jesus prosecuted his controversy with the rulers and elders, 292, 293. 
Mode of life of Jesus and his company in Jerusalem, 294. Strange confu- 
sion of identities in the story of the woman with her offering to Jesus, 295. 
The chief priests and elders, ignorant of the person of Jesus, are compelled 
to hire a disciple to point him out among the strangers, 295, 296. Un- 
certainty as to the feeling toward him of the Jewish populace — consequent 
caution of his enemies, 296. The populace take sides against him; subse- 
quent boldness of his enemies, 297. The narrative of the crucifixion most 
probable part of the synoptic narratives, 297. How the facts were probably 
learned by the writers, 298. Had the council of the Sanhedrim power to 
try and punish Jesus ? Political condition of Jerusalem and Palestine con- 
sidered, 299, 300. The Sanhedrim had power to try and punish at least all 
ecclesiastical offences, 300. The trials of Peter and John and Stephen, 301. 
Two essays in the Contemporary Review, on "Trial of Jesus," briefly re- 
viewed, 302, 303. Only one trial, and that before the Sanhedrim, 303. The 
matter only came to Pilate to get his warrant for the execution, 304. Two 
reasons given why the Sanhedrim wished to involve Pilate in the responsi- 
bility of putting Jesus to death, 304, 305. Proceedings against Jesus violent 
and illegal, 306, 307. The adjuration by the High Priest, and how Jesus 
made it the occasion of insuring his own condemnation, 308. The proba- 
ble course of the proceedings, 309, 310. Was the judgment against Jesus 
one which a just Jew might approve? 310, 311. Jesus had in fact claimed 
divine powers and authority, 311. Strictness of the Hebrew law of blas- 
phemy, 312. His claim, however, would not have subjected him to prosecu- 
tion, if he had refrained from provoking the priests and elders, 313. Laws 
against blasphemy ought to be executed with discrimination, 313. If Jesus 
had divine attributes, he studiously concealed them from his judges, 314, 
315. His bravery and reticence at his trial and under his torture, 316. 
Totally different account of the arrest and trial in the Fourth Gospel, 317. 
They took place according to it before the Passover, 318, 319. The trial 
not before the Sanhedrim, but before Pilate, 319. Undignified bearing of 
Jesus before the latter, contradictory of his noble silence, as told by the 
Synoptics, 319-324. Slight variance in Luke from the story of Matthew 
and Mark not to be followed, 325. Complete isolation of Jesus in Jerusa- 
lem, 326. Indignities heaped on him during his trial and execution, 326-329. 
Matthew and Mark's picture of his last hours compared with Luke's, 330, 331. 



CHAPTER XI. 

HIS PERSONAL PRETENSIONS AND CHARACTER, 332-381. 

To be considered in answering these questions : What he thought of him- 
self? What his age thought of him ? What was he ? 332. Implication of name 
Son of Man, 333. Jesus claimed divine inspiration and authority from the 
first, 334. Impression that he was the Christ not original with him, and not 
at first accepted by him, 334. Crisis of self-consciousness at Caesarea-Phil- 
>PP'» 335- Recapitulation of the conversation there, 335, 336. Obscure origin 
of all such self-consciousness, 337. Prevalent sadness of his temper, 338. 
Opinion concerning Jesus among his fellow countrymen, 339. Indifference 
of the people of Nazareth and Capernaum, 339. Probable alienation of 
his own family, 340. Paucity of his followers, and slight allegiance of the 
twelve, 341. Number of adherents at his death, 341. Number in Jerusa- 
lem and Judea, 342. Effect of excessive eulogies of Jesus to obscure his 
personal traits, 342. General accuracy of the synoptical descriptions of 



CONTENTS Vll 

his mental peculiarities, 343. The parables and apothegms of Jesus easy 
to retain long in the memory, 343. Not easy to remember his longer meta- 
physical discourses, 344. Wit, wisdom, and moral emphasis of many say- 
ings of Jesus, 345. He appreciated wit in others, 346. His fondness for 
intellectual puzzles, 347. Figurative character of his common speech, 348. 
How far he shared the false beliefs of his age, 349. His belief in angels, 
349. In devils and a prince of devils, 350. Blending of truth and poetry 
in his mind and teaching, 350. The Hebrew scriptures to him a divine 
revelation, 352. The divine oversight of the world to him arbitrary and 
moral, 353. His courage more conspicuous than his meekness, 354. Thor- 
oughness of his ethical methods, 355. Purity of his character, 356. His 
chaste ideas of marriage, 356. The highest modern conceptions of love 
not wholly the fruit of Christianity, 359. His rigorous rule of repression 
of anger, 360. Not himself true to it in his treatment of the Pharisees, 
360. General upright character and salutary influence of the Pharisees, 
362. Testimony of Paul, 363; of Josephus, 363. Early prejudice of Jesus 
against the Pharisees, 364. How it increased and expressed itself before his 
arrest, 366. Justice of his invectives, 367. Stress laid by him, in his later 
teaching, on faith and discipleship, rather than on righteousness, 369. His 
early and his later delineation of the day of judgment and the grounds 
of its sentences, 369. His indifference to common men, his antipathy to the 
heathen, 371. Character of Jesus to be studied, not in its typical and 
prophetic ideal, but in its historic significance, 373. His benevolence, 374. 
Capricious and propagandist exercise of the miraculous power attributed 
to him, 376. His reproach of Peter, and imprecation against the fig-tree, 
377. His expectation of a kingdom of heaven not realized, 378. He inspired 
a new religion, 379. His religion and himself compared with the other 
great religions, and the men who revealed them, 380. 



CHAPTER XII. 

LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION, 382-426. 

Best supported by evidence of all the miracles, 382. Two distinct ex- 
planations of the resurrection in the New Testament, 384. Great stress 
laid by the Galilean tradition on disappearance of the body, 385. Grave 
differences in the attending circumstances as told by the evangelists, 385. 
They all insist that the appearances of Jesus were material, 386. The 
more spiritual conception of Paul, 387. The Pauline idea of the resurrec- 
tion explained, 389. Its inconsistencies, 390. Events following the death of 
Jesus ; his burial, and the visits to the tomb, 393. Who visited it, at what 
time, what did they see and hear? substantial discrepancies in the report, 

394. The communication by angels, as told by Matthew, by Mark, by Luke, 

395. The Galilean and the Judaic tradition, origin of each, 396. Did Jesus 
after his death show himself alive to any man at Jerusalem ? 399. Did he 
show himself to Mary Magdalene or to any woman ? 399. The showing of 
Jesus to the two travellers to Emmaus, 401. The showing of Jesus to his 
disciples in Galilee, 403. Fatal differences in the accounts of it, 404. Im- 
mense consequence of Jesus' last words, and improbability of their being 
forgotten, 404. Entire disagreement in form and substance in the three 
evangelical narrations, 405. Legal effect of such difference in the proba- 
tive character of the testimony illustrated by a verbal will devising prop- 
erty, 405. The message, as told by each evangelist, recapitulated and 
considered, 407. How local prejudices among the disciples affected the 
report, 408. How the story of the resurrection gathered details in the 



Vlll CONTEXTS 

telling by the evangelists, 408. Further details given in Acts, 409. Paul's 
account, 410. Singular failure of the early Christians to agree about the 
manner of the resurrection or the communications of Jesus, 410. Summing 
up of the five different accounts, 411. Cross-examination distasteful to un- 
critical minds, 412. A resurrection not in the apparent plan of Jesus, 412. 
Did he foretell it? 413. Explanation of the sign of Jonas, 414. If he had 
foretold his resurrection, it would have been expected by his disciples, as it 
evidently was not, 415. Vapidity of ghostly messages, 416. Those ascribed 
to Jesus not an exception, 418. The substance of the message was that 
the gospel was to be preached to all nations, 420. The early Christians 
disclosed that they knew nothing about any such message, 420. In the case 
of the centurion Cornelius, 420. In the controversy about admitting the 
heathen to the promises of the gospel, 421. Singularity of the opinions 
attributed to Jesus after his death, 423. His doctrine of baptism, 423. Of 
the Trinity, 423. Different schools of believers have injected their favorite 
dogmas into communications ascribed to Jesus after his death, 424. What 
was real in the resurrection of Jesus, 425. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

INFLUENCE ON HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY OF PAUL AND JOHN, 427-471. 

Much of what is called Christianity the accretion of thought of the 
Christian ages, 427. Primitive Christianity to be studied in its scriptures, 

428. The Synoptic Gospels unauthorized reports of unlearned men, 429. 
Primitive Christianity found, after Jesus, two men of marked ability to 
construct and propagate it, — Paul and the author of the Fourth Gospel, 

429. In the expected crisis, no adequate provision made to record the 
life or sayings of Jesus, 430. Paul, — his ability, training, and mental and 
moral traits, 431. His genius, as disclosed in his speeches and letters, 431. 
Epistle to Romans his body of theology, 432. His speculations upon the 
resurrection, 432. His homily upon charity, 433. Two fragments of his 
speeches preserved in Acts, 434. His defects, 435. His false philosophy 
and bad logic, 435. His Jewish narrowness, 436. How he fitted the per- 
sonality of Jesus to his scheme of the divine providence, 437. Paul the 
author of the Christian theology, 437. His scheme essentially Jewish, 
438. Exalting Jesus to Heaven, he takes his place on earth as teacher 
of the Church, 438. His courage and love of leadership illustrated by his 
shipwreck, 439. Summary of the Pauline theologv, 441. Paul did not 
learn it of Jesus, 441. How he varied the ethical teachings of Jesus, 442. 
His attitude toward the State, 442 ; toward the rich, 442. He supplemented 
the teachings of Jesus, 442. Jesus a recluse and iconoclast, Paul a man of 
the world and compromiser, 443. Paul's ideas of woman and of marriage, 
445. Advantage he gained over Jesus by getting into literature, 445. His 
influence, thwarted bv the pillar apostles, revives after his death, 446. 
Greatly dominant in Protestantism and since its rise, 446. With Paul's 
interpretation alone, Christianity a barren dogmatism, 446. A man of 
mystic insight and cipable of poetic emotion required to give it impulse, 
an 1 found in so-called John, 447. Purpose of Fourth Gospel didactic and 
not historic, 44S. A development of Pauline ideas 44S. Not written by 
John the apostle, 449. Its eschatologv unlike that of the Synoptics, 451. 
It composed controversies among the Christians, 452. More than Paul, the 
writer idealized Jesus, 453, 454. Like Paul, he apologizes for the Pharisees, 

454. Vividness of its descriptions, 455. Deficiency of its dramatic power, 

455. Defects of its style. Superfluous statement's; instances given, 456^ 



CONTENTS IX 

Vulgar expletives,— instances given, 457. Quite foreign to the manner of 
Jesus, 457. Irrelevant and inconsequential reasons given for statements; 
instances, 458. Mixed metaphors; instances, 459. The writer incapable of 
true allegory, 459. Rudeness of language; instances, 459. Paucity of ideas 
and wealth of sentiment, 460. The writer quite capable of the best thoughts 
he imputes to Jesus; instances, 461. If Jesus said what the Fourth Gospel 
reports, he could not have uttered the Sermon on the Mount and the par- 
ables, 461. Theologic and philosophic ideas of Fourth Gospel, 462. Cir- 
cumstances that enhanced its reputation, 463. A parallel in Shakspeare's 
dramatic "Henry VIII.," 465. It presents the heart of Jesus, 466. It 
was in the New Scriptures what the Psalms were in the Old. The author 
the forerunner of the mystics, 467. His work a free-handling of the annals 
of the Synoptics, — the beginning of all the rehabilitations of Christ, 468. 
Jesus the fountain-head of Christianity, Paul and John its two great rivers, 
Tigris and Euphrates, 468. Their methods to be adopted rather than their 
conclusions, 469. The form of Christian doctrine must not cramp the 
Christian spirit, 469. Christianity interrogated on the side of intelligence 
and of morality. It must answer wisely on both sides, or give place to a 
gospel that can answer, 470, 471, 



PREFACE. 



It had been for many years a cherished purpose of the writer of 
the following chapters to examine, without prejudice or prepos- 
session, the authentic documents in which are found the traditions 
of the origin of Christianity, and to ascertain what they indicate in 
reference to the character, opinions, and controlling purposes of 
Jesus. Engrossing occupation in professional employments, while 
requiring the postponement of the undertaking, better qualified 
for its successful performance, by knowledge acquired of the most 
approved methods of analyzing and formulating evidence, and of 
determining its probability and strength and the conclusions of fact 
which it compelled. The leisure of the last few years brought to the 
writer the opportunity to attempt the realization of a task which may 
perhaps be deemed beyond the scope of his scholarship and critical 
powers. 

The many books upon the same subject that have appeared within 
the last few years in this country and in other countries, where 
thought is active and free, indicate that, so far from being exhausted, 
the life of Jesus has only begun to be studied. Most of these books 
have been written with the purpose, more or less confessed, of 
strengthening and confirming the devout prepossessions by which 
they were inspired. Of the fewer of them written in a historic spirit, 
and regarding Jesus,' his character, teachings, and influence as 
normal developments of a civilization that has advanced, not only 
by steady growth, but by strong impulses given to it by the incursion 
of great men and the spring-tide of great epochs, some have been 
m.irrc 1 by lack of method in their study and of consistency and 
probability in the character they have delineated; some by arbitrary 
marshalling of the traditions to support a fanciful mythical theory; 
and still others by the confession, everywhere virtually expressed in 
them, that the barren compliment of sentimental adulation was to be 
offered to a dethroned Deity in compensation for degrading him from 
the height of worship where reason had ceased to recognize him. 

What seemed to be called for was a judicial and critical study of 
the traditions of Jesus, which should find, in the nobleness of his 
character and in the peculiar national sentiments of the race t> 



which he belonged, a reason for the daring ambition that drove him 
to the accomplishment of his destiny ; which should explain how a 
new religion, the element of excellence and permanence in which 
was its system of esoteric ethics, should have subjected its author, 
through the general disaffection of his countrymen, to a premature 
and cruel death, and what peculiar conditions of the world and what 
co-operating agency of kindred minds contributed to give new vitality 
to that religion, after it had been, apparently, overthrown by his 
murder and the scattering of his disciples. If the present attempt 
has to any extent outlined a chief person of human history, the 
incidents and issue of whose life flowed naturally, as other men's do, 
from the force of his character and the direction of his activity, 
whose dominant idea once understood gives a general consistency 
and symmetry to all his ideas and to all his conduct, some approach 
has been made to the naked veracity of history, even if men like 
Matthew Arnold, to whom what is rational and intelligible seems to 
be suspicious, should satirize the method as " rigorous and vigorous." 

The range of investigation, though narrow, is fairly within the 
scope of the inquiry undertaken, it having been confessed by the 
most accomplished scholars, that there is next to nothing that can 
throw light upon the character and work of Jesus outside the canon 
of received Scripture. Nearly all the discussions, from a rational- 
istic point of view, of the supernatural phenomena asserted to have 
produced or attended the introduction into the world of the Chris- 
tian faith, have impugned, to a greater or less degree, the trustworthi- 
ness and credibility of the Christian documents. The genuineness 
of those documents has been assailed and their imputed authorship 
denied, whereby the evidence which they contain has been degraded 
from the first hand testimony of eye-and-ear witnesses of the events 
they undertake to narrate to the second or third hand report of what 
artful partisans have heard others say. 

The writer of these papers — beginning with the assumption that 
the Christian documents are authentic and a bona fide setting forth 
of the career of Jesus, as it was believed by the writers of them to 
have occurred, and that the question of authorship, arising, as it 
does, between Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and certain later adherents 
of Jesus unknown, but not a whit less obscure, illiterate, or unau- 
thorized, is a question of secondary importance — has set himself to 
the task of ascertaining what the documents themselves seem fairly 
to prove. 

His method of procedure was to draw up, by reference to the 
original texts of the Synoptical Gospels, every declaration reported 



PREFACE J 

to have been made by Jesus during his life, together with such of 
the res gestae as might be considered, along with his language, 
as expository of his thought. After an exhaustive list of these had 
been accumulated in the order of their narration, an attempt was 
made to classify and arrange them by subjects, placing in the same 
category whatever Jesus was believed to have said upon each special 
subject, or that might seem legitimately to relate to it. Finally, a 
finding or summing up — such as is imposed upon the judicial mind 
in determining, from a mass of notes of oral testimony or of docu- 
ments and papers, what are the facts upon which, under the proper 
rules of law, the rights of litigants are to be determined — was 
undertaken, and a statement drawn up of what Jesus seemed to have 
believed and taught. 

The only prepossession the writer is aware of in approaching the 
study of which these chapters are the record is that the great, 
dominant purpose of Jesus was to proclaim and prepare for the 
kingdom of heaven, although the nature of that kingdom and when 
it was to be expected to begin only became apparent after a complete 
review of the testimony. Upon all other points, the writer confesses 
he had no prepossession, and was himself, in many instances, sur- 
prised at results that contradicted the prejudices in which he had 
been educated, though his later reading has shown him how widely 
these conclusions have been arrived at by other minds and how little 
claim he has to any priority of discovery. 

At the very outset, the alternative presented itself between the 
validity of the Fourth Gospel and that of the other three. All 
attempt at reconciliation and harmony of the two conflicting narra- 
tives, for reasons fully set forth in the text, was necessarily aban- 
doned. In electing to follow, generally, the statements of the three 
witnesses and to discredit the one, the writer believes he has fol- 
lowed not only the judgment of the most conscientious and compe- 
tent scholars, but complied with one of the fundamental canons of 
the law of evidence. 

So far as any criticism or adverse judgment has been ventured in 
reference to what seemed to have been the opinions of Jesus, — espe- 
cially as to the speedy end of the world, to the incompatibility of 
property with personal salvation, and of marriage with the perfection 
of righteousness, as to indiscriminate almsgiving, to absolute non- 
resistance, to the hostility of political society to the order of the 
kingdom of heaven, — it is no personal criticism or private judgment: 
it is, rather, the deliberate judgment of Christendom against Christ. 
It is the sober second thought of the educated and fully developed 



5 PREFACE 

age in reference to the enthusiasms and overfaith of the mind that 
introduced it. 

The following propositions in reference to Jesus, believed to have 
been established by the investigation, may be considered as well 
verified as any events of ancient history. They are stated in the 
order of the validity and cumulation of the proofs upon which they 
stand : — 

i. There lived in the beginning of the present era, in Palestine, in 
Syria, a teacher, prophet, and holy man, from whom the great world- 
religion, called Christianity, is named ; and who, though not the 
author of its prominent ideas and doctrines nor the inventor of its 
dogmatic form, was, in some sense, its inspirer and source. He was 
put to death by his countrymen, who mainly rejected his personal 
claims and repudiated his peculiar doctrines. 

2. He believed and taught that the end of the world, both as to 
its internal economy and physical constitution, was impending; and 
that, after his own death, which, if he did not provoke, he took no 
pains to avert, he would return to establish on the ruins of the old 
order a new kingdom of the righteous to endure forever. 

3. He taught the blessedness of poverty, the incompatibility of 
wealth with the spiritual well-being of mankind, and that to enter the 
kingdom of heaven men must forsake and surrender their posses- 
sions, and forego all care for their physical existence. 

The first of these propositions is based upon the concurrent testi- 
mony of the four extant written versions of the original tradition 
published somewhere after the year 55 and before the year 180 of 
the Christian era, upon the extant writings of the first Christian 
missionaries of whom Paul is the best known : it is asserted in 
secular history, and the reputation of it would have survived to our 
times without any mention in history. 

The second proposition has all the same supports, except that 
secular history takes no notice of it ; and its tradition is only pre- 
served among obscure sects. 

The third proposition, maintained in the most reliable traditions, 
is not supported by the Fourth Gospel nor by the adhesion of Paul, 
though the other apostolic writings, emphatically that imputed to 
James, affirm it. 

The following propositions, not absolutely verified, are fairly 
probable and only deniable by a severe and rigorous scepticism : — 

1. Jesus taught rules of personal conduct requiring, among other 
things, universal and indiscriminate beneficence, the absolute for- 
giveness and sufferance of injuries, simplicity and directness of 



speech, avoidance of censoriousness, chastity and self-denial to the 
point of extirpation of natural instincts, and the repression of 
ambition. 

These rules, however, are given with fundamental discrepancies in 
but two of the Gospels, and are wholly omitted in the other two. It 
is not certain that they are quoted in any of the writings of the 
apostles, whose rules and sanctions for personal conduct are some- 
what different. Finally, they were not always conformed to by Jesus 
himself. 

2. He had a certain power of allaying and curing mental maladies 
and those physical disabilities resulting from impaired nervous action. 
The great miracles of raising the dead, multiplying food and wine, 
walking on the sea, and whatever else is imputed to him outside the 
known scope of human powers, are not proved, on account of the 
material variances in the testimony of the evangelists concerning 
them ; of the settled consensus of the competent to reject all miracles, 
when told in connection with other religions or as occurring in any 
age later than the first century, upon testimony more concurrent and 
trustworthy than that upon which the New Testament miracles have 
been believed ; and on account of the feeble and doubtful confirma- 
tion they receive from the apostolic writers, and of the impossibility 
that the Jewish people, or any people, could have contemptuously 
rejected and cruelly slain a person who had, in their sight or knowl- 
edge, done such awe-inspiring works of divine power. On the other 
hand, some mysterious power must be attributed to Jesus to account 
for the influence he had over a certain class of simple and illiterate 
men, not likely to be attracted by the uncompromising severity of 
his ethical doctrines. 

3. He did not originate nor give any special stress to the doctrine 
of personal immortality. It was believed in by the leading classes 
of his people and by the nations of Asia and Africa ages before his 
time ; and the details of the life of men after death are given with 
much more minuteness and vividness by Paul, who never heard 
Jesus, than by Jesus himself. His scheme of a future life was 
swallowed up in his scheme of an impending kingdom of heaven. 

4. As to the doctrines of the trinity of the Godhead, the complete 
and natural depravity of man as such, the condemnation of the 
human race for the sin of the first created pair, the expiation of 
the sins of those who believe in Jesus by the divinely appointed 
sacrifice of the Son of God, though germs of such ideas appear in 
the apostolic writings and later in the Fourth Gospel, they are no- 
where discoverable in any accredited sayings of Jesus. 



CHAPTER I. 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE. 

" We must look for the apostolic root of the whole movement in the 
Synoptical Gospels, and more especially in those of Matthew and Mark ; for 
Luke already betrays an approach to the Catholic tendencies of Paul. 
Here, we get the truest idea of Christ and his works as historical verities." — 
John James Tayler. 

Nearly nineteen hundred years ago there appeared in 
Galilee, a province of Palestine, then subject to Rome, a 
man whose teaching and character, aided by certain ad- 
ventitious circumstances, powerfully affected the human 
race, and opened a new epoch in its history. After he 
became famous, it was claimed for him that he was a lin- 
eal descendant of David and the early Jewish kings ; but 
the genealogies given in two of his brief biographies are 
too contradictory in their details to establish the royal 
lineage of Joseph, — a fact of no account, as those biogra- 
phies maintain that Joseph was not his father. The 
imputation of his parentage to the Holy Ghost is robbed 
of its grossness, when it is considered that it was the 
effort of a reverent imagination to- account for the phe- 
nomenon, by no means rare in human history, of a man 
born into the world whose grandeur of genius transcends 
all the apparent capabilities of his ancestors. 

The name which he has given to history was Christ ; 
but that Greek title, which obtained among his followers, 
seems to have been little used in his lifetime, he being 
known in his family and among his people as Jesus, a 
which signifies Saviour, but which is the same name as 
Joshua, and, like other words indiscriminately used to 
designate indifferent individuals, would soon lose in the 
popular apprehension all association with ideas. He 
seems to have belonged to quite a large family '' among 
the artisan classes, and, until lie assumed the character 



12 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

of prophet, is said to have followed his father's vocation of 
a carpenter. The amazement which his wisdom excited 
in the popular mind was increased by an impression that 
he was illiterate, and had never been taught to read. a 
Whether this were so or not, a devout Jew, brought up 
in attendance upon the weekly reading and explaining of 
the Jewish law, ritual, and history in the synagogue, is not 
to be considered uneducated. 

His whole career, after he emerged from the industrious 
obscurity of his early manhood, is not claimed to cover a 
period of more than three years ; and the events of au- 
thentic occurrence, which are told in a consecutive order 
in what are called the Synoptic Gospels, might all have 
occurred, and apparently did all occur, in a single year. 

What Jesus was, what he thought and believed, what 
he taught, and what he did in that brief career, the whole 
world are intensely eager to know. And, to satisfy this 
intense craving, it has recourse mainly to three brief 
histories, which, so far as they agree, seem to have been 
copied from each other, the authorship of which is doubt- 
fully imputed to obscure persons, whose relation to Jesus 
is so remote, and whose authority to publish his faith is 
so questionable, that everything in them, probable even 
in itself, must be read with misgiving as to its actual 
occurrence. 

There is a fourth biography, imputed to a confidential 
friend and disciple of Jesus ; but this gives us a character 
and history so wholly different from the other three, that, 
instead of throwing light upon a subject already obscure, 
it enhances the doubt and perplexity that surround it. 

Mohammed and Confucius carefully committed to writ- 
ing a summary of their respective doctrines. Socrates, 
coming in an enlightened age and among an enlightened 
people, was happy in the discipleship of two cultivated 
men, Plato and Xenophon, who gave to the world the 
different phases of his philosophy. Even Sakya Mouni 
was more fortunate than Jesus, in that he finished his 
career, and lived to see his ideas practically adopted by 
great communities of men, and to give his own sanction 
to the teachings of disciples. But Jesus was interrupted 
by a violent death in nearly the beginning of a prophetic 

n John vii , 15 ; Luke iv., 22. 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE I 3 

course ; nor does he seem to have had in his mind a com- 
pleted system of religion and philosophy, such as Chris- 
tianity, as it came to be developed in the hands of his 
followers. It will be necessary to discover, if it can be 
done by a careful study of his ideas, why no other pro- 
vision was made for an authorized exposition of his doc- 
trines than the volunteer biographies imputed to Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John, and why the propagation of the 
gospel among the Gentiles was intrusted to the apostle, 
who never had seen Jesus alive, and who, in all his 
writings, has scarcely mentioned any of the incidents of 
his life. 

The personality of Jesus seems to have made but little 
impression upon Paul. He is to Paul not so much an his- 
torical person as a celestial functionary, performing an 
office, mainly through the efficacy of his death and blood, 
in the accomplishment of the salvation of the elect. The 
crowning fact, all the fact deemed worthy of considera- 
tion by the dogmatic apostle, is the resurrection ; and, 
upon that fact, he predicates the whole scheme of a new 
ailtus and a new order of the universe. Accordingly, we 
fail to find in any of Paul's writings the remotest allusion 
to any wonders of healing or other miracle-working clone 
by Jesus, or to any of his acts of human charity and 
beneficence. The sententious and striking utterances by 
which Jesus was wont to command the ready attention 
of men everywhere, the vivid imagination which enabled 
him to embody, in allegories and parables, a metaphysical 
idea or a didactic lesson, are never quoted nor imitated. 
And though, like Jesus, Paul develops a system of ethics, 
and gives minute directions as to outward conduct and 
the control and development of the interior temper, his 
system is, in form and substance, unlike that of Jesus, 
and not only contradicts it in fundamental respects, but 
is based upon different sanctions. 

Equally unsatisfactory is our search through the other 
apostolic Epistles to find definite data, out of which to 
complete our picture of the personal traits of Jesus or 
the incidents of his life. If these writings are properly 
attributed to Peter, James, and John, his trusted disciples 
and kinsfolk, this absence is quite remarkable. Paul, a 
Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in Jerusa- 



14 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

lem, — who docs not claim to have seen Jesus, except after 
his death, in a vision, writing, when the memorabilia of 
Jesus, now embodied in the Gospels, were only traditions 
communicated from one believer to another, — might have 
chosen to ignore all those traditions. He seems even to 
have done it studiedly and with a purpose. The spiritual 
Christ, in his fervid soul, had so overshadowed the Christ 
after the flesh, that he did not care to recur to an image 
which had become to him carnal, earthly, and temporal. 
But why should not Peter and John and James, if they 
were indeed the authors of the canonical Epistles attrib- 
uted to them, have given us some of the impressions, which 
intimate association with a presence so attractive as their 
great Master's was must have made upon their vivid memo- 
ries ? Why, using copiously the words and deeds of patri- 
archs and prophets to illustrate in their sermons and 
letters the lessons they taught the new Church, did they 
so nearly omit the acts and sayings of Jesus himself, so 
much more edifying . and authoritative for the same pur- 
poses ? Paul, indeed, alludes to the ceremony of the sym- 
bolical eating of bread and wine enjoined by Jesus, and 
imputes to him words not differing so much from those 
reported in the Third Gospel as they differ from those 
reported in the First and Second Gospels. a James gives 
with emphasis the prohibition of all oaths and of all indi- 
rectness of speech, in phraseology like the Sermon on the 
Mount, but strangely omits to enforce the lesson by 
attributing the prohibition to Jesus. b The writer of the 
Second Epistle of Peter c corroborates the account given 
in the Synoptic Gospels of the voice from heaven, to affirm 
the divine origin of Jesus upon the mount of transfigura- 
tion. But, when the writer of the First Epistle of Peter d 
has occasion to cite the example of Jesus to be followed 
by his disciples, instead of giving his own recollections 
of what he had seen or heard, or any tradition of him 
that afterward found place in the Gospels, he contents 
himself with a prophetic sketch derived from the Old 
Testament, supposed to foreshadow his functions as a 
Redeemer. In the First Epistle imputed to John are 
repeated several of the declarations which the same 

a I. Cor. xi., 24, 25. 1) James v., 12. 

ell. Peter i., 17, 18. «I. Peter ii., 22-34. 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 1 5 

writer as an evangelist imputes to Jesus ; but this iden- 
tity has another import, to be considered hereafter. 

In the narrative called the Acts of the Apostles, purport- 
ing to be the production of the writer of the Third Gospel, 
we should naturally look for some vivid pictures of the 
human life of Jesus. But there, as in the Epistles, we find 
Christ in his office of mediator, intercessor between man 
and God, and bringer of salvation from sin and eternal life 
to those who believed on him, rather than Jesus the man, 
the teacher, disclosing new conceptions of the relations of 
man to God, reinforcing virtue by new motives and sanc- 
tions, and prescribing for conduct a wider and deeper con- 
formity to an ideal righteousness. As in the Epistles, 
the great stress is laid upon the efficacy of his blood and 
death, and the vindication by his resurrection of a power 
effectual to the salvation of all believers. 

Peter indeed, on the occasion when the new believers 
assembled together on Pentecost day were kindled with 
an enthusiasm that seemed so marvellous to themselves, 
speaks thus to the people of the man they had a few 
days before scornfully rejected and crucified : " Ye men 
of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man 
approved of God among you by miracles, wonders, and 
signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye 
yourselves also know : him being delivered by the deter- 
minate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, 
and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." a In this 
declaration, the manhood of Jesus is emphasized, and his 
miracles are spoken of as done through him by God. 
Later, welcoming to the hopes of Christianity the devout 
Roman soldier Cornelius, the same apostle asserts that 
Jesus of Nazareth was anointed by God "with the Holy 
Ghost and with power"; that he "went about doing 
good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil " ; 
and that he, Peter, and his fellow-disciples are witnesses 
of all the things which Jesus did in the land of the Jews 
and in Jerusalem. '' 

Paul is represented as quoting, in an address to the 
Jews at Antioch, John Baptist's testimony, that Jesus 
was greater than he.'' Exhorting the converts at Ephesus 
to be diligent in laboring, that they may have some- 

,22,23. l»Acts x., 38, 39. "Acts xiii., 35. 



l6 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

thing to support the weak, he reminds them of a saying 
he imputes to Jesus, though none of the Gospels report 
it, — "It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" 1 

Of Jesus, it was said that he spake as one having au- 
thority, and not as the scribes ; and the evangelist repre- 
sents him as speaking of the fundamental precepts of the 
Mosaic law in the decalogue as traditions of them of old 
time, and either false or inadequate. But his disciples, 
including even the bold and eloquent Paul, speak of Jesus 
in an apologetic tone, and scarcely mention his acts and 
never his distinctive words. Doubtless, they were com- 
pelled by the hostile prejudices and inveterate bigotry of 
the Jews to find for Jesus a place in the Hebrew dispen- 
sation as its supplement or fulfilment, and to claim faith 
in him rather on the score of prophetic foreshadowing 
of his character and office than for his living work and 
words. Believing, as they did at first, that the gospel which 
Jesus brought was for the Jews, they everywhere appealed 
to the Hebrew Scriptures as setting forth his character, 
his death, and his resurrection, and asserted that the king- 
dom which he was coming with his angels to establish 
on earth was the consummation which Israel had been 
for ages waiting for. This strictly national and sectarian 
aspect in which his immediate followers seem everywhere, 
in this fragment of the Acts of the Apostles, to have pre- 
sented the phenomenon of Jesus, is not a complete nega- 
tion of the stupendous acts and the new ideas which the 
evangelists impute to him ; but it is an unmistakable index 
of how little impression those acts and ideas had at that 
time made upon the multitudes that dwelt in Judea and 
Jerusalem, and upon the Jewish communities scattered 
through the Greek cities. 

When we come to the gospel narratives as sources 
of information concerning the history and character of 
Jesus, we are met at the outset with the general similar- 
ity and concurrence of the first three and the indepen- 
dent and conflicting details of the last. 

The author of the Fourth Gospel does not mention the 
birth of Jesus or any incident of his life earlier than his 
baptism by John. He calls him Jesus of Nazareth, b and 
speaks of Joseph as his father, Mary as his mother, and 

"Acts xx., 35. •> John i , 45, 46. 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 'I J 

names his brothers. According to this writer, John the 
Baptist was baptizing in Bethany, a place somewhere 
upon the eastern side of the river Jordan in the wilder- 
ness or wooded country about its banks, when Jesus 
came first to him. The following day, John saw Jesus 
again walking, and pointed him out to those who were 
with him as the Lamb of God, upon which testimony two 
men, one of them Andrew, one of the twelve apostles, 
attached themselves to Jesus as disciples. Andrew im- 
mediately procured his brother Simon, afterward famous 
as Peter, to join the new prophet also. The day follow- 
ing, Jesus went into Galilee. So that it is fairly inferri- 
ble that this first sight of Jesus by John and this adhesion 
of two chief apostles happened in the wilderness country 
beyond Jordan and somewhere between the Sea of Galilee 
and the Dead Sea. Nathaniel, who with Philip became 
his disciple, on his return to Galilee calls him Jesus of 
Nazareth ; and his residence in that city seemed well 
enough known in the neighboring cities to give him a 
special identity among the many persons of the Jewish 
race, who in all that region bore the very common 
name of Jesus." 

Returning to Galilee from the Jordan wilderness, Jesus 
next appears as a wedding guest at a marriage in the city 
of Cana, at which his mother and probably his brothers 
were also present. There, it is told of him that, when the 
wine failed, he miraculously changed water into wine of 
such excellent quality that the governor of the feast spe- 
cially complimented it, while reminding the bridegroom 
that a poorer article would have complied with all the 
requirements of custom in the latter stages of the drink- 
ing. 15 Then, the narrator affirms, "This beginning of mir- 
acles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth 
his glory; and his disciples believed on him." c As disci- 
ples, they have hitherto believed in him as a prophet. 
Henceforth, he is to them the representative and Son of 
God, — -the Christ who was to come. From Cana, in 
company with his mother and brothers, he came to Caper- 
naum, but continued there not many days. The Jewish 
passover being at hand, Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and 
expelled from the temple those who were there according 

"John i., 28, 35-42, is. b John ii., 1-10. c John ii., 11, 13-17, 23. 



l8 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

to wont and to a permission of the Mosaic law to sell 
beasts and birds for temple sacrifices to the worshippers 
coming from a distance. While at Jerusalem on the feast 
day, it is asserted that he did miracles and gained many 
disciples. This statement is confirmed by Nicodemus, a 
leading Pharisee, who during this first visit to Jerusalem 
visits Jesus by night, and opens the conversation by 
avowing that "no man can do these miracles that thou 
doest, except God be with him." a After these things, — 
that is, after the coming to Jerusalem to the passover, 
the casting out of the money-changers from the temple, 
the unnamed miracles at Jerusalem, which had gained 
disciples and attracted Nicodemus to him, — Jesus goes 
from Jerusalem into the country of Judea apparently east- 
ward and northward ; for he goes to Enon b on the Galilean 
border of the Jordan. And although it is asserted that 
they, Jesus and his disciples, were baptized there, the 
whole testimony of the evangelist fairly implies that only 
the disciples were baptized, Jesus having been baptized 
before ; for John Baptist had testified that he was the 
Lamb of God, while asserting that he knew that only 
from the fact, that the dove had lit upon him at his bap- 
tism, which must thus have already taken place. 

Following the slender thread of narrative with which 
the writer of the Fourth Gospel illustrates his monologue 
of Jesus, we learn next that Jesus pursued his northward 
journey through Samaria to Galilee, holding a remark- 
able conversation with a woman at Jacob's well. Here, 
he exercised a power of thought-reading or divination, 
such as is claimed by modern spiritualists ; for he told the 
woman incidents of her past domestic life not altogether 
reputable, and gained not only from her, but from her 
friends, the reputation of being a prophet. 11 

Two days later, Jesus comes to Galilee, where he is rep- 
resented as, up to that time, not being of any great 
repute. But it is told that the Galileans received him, or 
accepted him, not on the score of anything done, among 
them, but liaving seen all the tilings that he did at Jeru- 
salem at the feast, for the Galileans also went unto the 
feast? This declaration accords perfectly with what had 

a John iii., 2. •» John iii., 22, 23. c John iv. ( 3-5, 16-19. 
djohn iv., 39. e John iv., 45. 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 19 

been told previously. He had done but one miracle in 
Galilee, the vinifaction of the water at the wedding, which 
was unknown to all but the servants ; and Jesus' impa- 
tient exclamation to his mother implies that he wished to 
have this miracle concealed. But he had done conspic- 
uous miracles in Jerusalem. To make this more explicit, 
the evangelist proceeds to tell the healing of the noble- 
man's sick son in a Capernaum ; and then, to do exact and 
numerical justice to Galilee, as the theatre of the works 
of the great prophet, — about which, it is easy to believe, 
there were dissensions among the believers, each party 
claiming distinction for their own country, — he adds these 
words: "This is again the second miracle that Jestis did, 
when he was come out of Judea into Galilee." b 

After this the occurring of another Jewish feast, the 
passover brought Jesus again to Jerusalem, and there he 
healed a lame man lying at the pool of Bethesda d on the 
Sabbath day. Although he was at first obliged to hide 
himself from the Jews, who threatened punishment for a 
violation of the Sabbath, he reappeared, showed himself 
in the temple, boldly avowed his act, appealed to the 
works which he had done as the credentials of a divine 
mission, and told the Jews that, if they really believed 
Moses, they would believe in him, for that Moses had 
foretold him. e 

He next returns to Galilee, and in the neighborhood of 
the Sea of Tiberias so multiplies a few loaves of bread 
and two fishes that they feed to satisfaction five thousand 
people/ The multitude who saw this miracle believed 
that he was the prophet promised to their nation. In 
their enthusiasm, they wanted to make him a king ; but 
he withdrew into a mountain^ and the night following, 
walking on the surface of the sea, rejoined his disciples, 
who had embarked to row to Capernaum across the lake, 
and terrifying them with the fear that he was a spirit. 
We are next told of a discourse he held, suggested by the 
miraculous feeding in the synagogue at Capernaum, with 
the people who had followed him from the other side of 
the lake. h In the face of the palpable miracle, they 

n John iv., 46. bjohniv., 54. cjohnv., i. 
d John v., 9, 10. e John v., 36-46. f John vi., 10-13. 
K John vi., 15, 19. h John vi., 25. 



20 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

demand a sign ; and he tells them he is the manna of 
heaven 11 sent down to give them life. Many, who had 
been his disciples here, turned from him ; and he expressed 
doubts about the fidelity of the twelve. b 

He avoided visiting Jerusalem for some days after his 
disciples went thither to the Feast of the Tabernacles and 
tarried in Galilee ; c and it is told that, even after these four 
Galilean miracles, his brothers did not believe in him. d 
In the midst of the feast, which lasted several days, Jesus 
himself appeared in Jerusalem, and taught openly in the 
temple. 6 It was notorious that the leading Jews sought 
his life. He himself had avoided Jerusalem for fear of 
them ; and the only reason the writer gives why his ene- 
mies did not take him, when he appeared among them, 
was that his time was not yet come. 1 He is represented 
as making some impression upon the people of the chief 
city by this discourse, since many asserted that he must 
be the Messiah ; but to the assertion of the orthodox 
Jews, that there was no Scripture warrant for receiving a 
Galilean as a Messiah, it was nowhere, by any adherents, 
maintained that he was in fact born in Bethlehem, s nor is 
such fact ever asserted by this biographer. 

It is next related that Jesus went to the Mount of 
Olives, but returned early in the morning to the temple, 
where, after he had released from her accusers the woman 
taken in adultery, he held another discussion with the 
Pharisees, in which he gave offence to some of the Jews 
who believed on him by telling them that they were not 
the children of Abraham, but the children of the devil. 
The Jews became so exasperated at his claim, as they 
understood it, to have been contemporary with Abraham, 
that they were about to stone him ; and he hid himself, 
and escaped from the temple. 11 On his way, Jesus met a 
blind man, and restored his sight. As this was done on 
the Sabbath, many Jews insisted that Jesus was not of 
God ; but others asked, How can a man that is a sinner 
do miracles?' The colloquy with the Jews proceeded; 
and the time and place are given as in Solomon's porch 
of the temple, and in winter time. It thus appears that 

n John vi., 32, 41. bjohn vi., 60, 64. c John vii., i, 2. 

'1 John vii., 5. ejohn vii, 10, 14. f John vii., 25, 26, 30, 31. 

Rjohn vii., 42, 52 hjohn viii., 1, 2, 11, 31, 33, 44, 50, 59- "John be., 1, 6, 7, 16. 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 21 

Jesus had come to Jerusalem in the midst of the Feast 
of Tabernacles, which was in October, and had remained 
there till winter. 11 But now, being again in danger of 
arrest, he betook himself to the Jordan wilderness, where 
John at first baptized. b Some indefinite time after, it 
must have been a short time, — for the disciples speak 
of these attempts of the Jews to stone him as events 
of late occurrence, — Jesus again comes into Judea, c and at 
Bethany performs the miracle of raising from the dead — 
in the presence of his sisters and many Jews, their friends 
who had come from Jerusalem to condole with them — the 
man Lazarus, who had been four days buried. The effect 
of this miracle in winning converts among the Jews was 
said to have been so great that the chief priests and 
Pharisees in council feared he would seduce the nation 
from its allegiance to Caesar, and bring on a war that 
would destroy it ; and, from that time, they studiedly 
plotted the death of Jesus. d The catastrophe was avoided 
by his withdrawal to the city of Ephraim, in the neigh- 
borhood of the wilderness, and within the limits of Sama- 
ria, where he stayed with his disciples. 

Now approached again the Feast of the Passover, which 
occurred in April. There had been three of these annual 
feasts during the public career of Jesus ; and he had not 
failed to be present in Jerusalem at any of them, besides 
going up in the autumn of the previous year to the Feast 
of the Tabernacles. His coming to these feasts was so 
well known that the people speculated whether the known 
purpose of the Pharisees to compass his death would 
induce him to break a punctilious habit. He came, how- 
ever, but evidently depressed with a manifest foreboding 
of his death. When Mary, whose brother Lazarus he 
had restored to life, anointed his feet with a costly oint- 
ment, he said it was for his burial. Many Jews believed 
on him, on account of the miracle of Lazarus ; and, on his 
riding into the city, they met him with palm-branches 
and shoutings of Hosanna to the king of Israel/ The 
people that had seen Lazarus resuscitated testified of the 
fact ; and the Pharisees, in despair, exclaimed that they 
prevailed not at all against him, and that the whole world 

"John x , 22, 23. '• Jolin x., 39, 40. Cjohn xi., 7, 8. 
•I John xi., 17, 43—45, .17, .|S, 55, 56. c John xii., 7, S. f John xii., 0, 12, 13. 



22 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

was gone after him. a This success did not reassure him. 
The shadow of coming death broods over his spirit, and 
gives an indescribable pathos to all his last acts and words. 
He withdraws more and more to the society of his trusted 
disciples. After the feast, while they were yet seated, he 
rose, and, girding himself with a towel, with his own 
hands washed his disciples' feet, — as he assured them, to 
give them a lesson of humility and affectionate service. 6 
He then proceeds to exhort them in those words of simple 
and touching eloquence which have been cherished and 
repeated with reverent gratitude, through eighteen centu- 
ries, by generations of devout disciples, as the affectionate 
expression of the divine compassion ; and finally, having 
comforted and strengthened his followers by a memorable 
prayer, he submits to the soldiers, who, under the author- 
ity of the high priests, present themselves to his privacy, 
and hurry him away to his hasty trial and terrible death 
on the cross. 

Here is related a career covering the recurrence of 
three annual passovers, or more than two' whole years, 
mainly passed in Judea and Jerusalem. It is said that 
Jesus made three visits to Galilee in that time ; but it is 
denied that his abode in Capernaum, where Matthew as- 
serts that he lived, continued for many days.' 1 While in 
Galilee, he did the miracles of making water into wine, of 
healing the nobleman's son, of walking on the sea, and of 
feeding the five thousand people with five loaves and two 
fishes. Only the last of these was so public and indis- 
putably supernatural as to coerce general attention ; but, 
after them all, his own brothers did not believe his pro- 
phetic pretensions. It is asserted that the Galileans, 
who believed on him, believed only on the report of 
miracles done in Judea f and Jerusalem. In the latter 
region, it is not only related that he did many miracles, 
which won converts, which were conceded by the people, 
and which the high priests who conspired against him did 
not deny, but that, with the utmost publicity and before 
many reputable Jews, he healed the impotent man at the 
pool -of Bethesda, restored sight to one born blind in the 
neighborhood of the temple, and called Lazarus alive from 

a John x i i . , 17-19. b John xiii., 1-10. c John xiv., xv., xvi., xvii., xviii. 
, 12. ejohnvii., 5. f John i v., 45 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 23 

his grave, after he had been buried four days, in Bethany. 
Besides this, all his principal discourses, both with the 
people and his disciples, were at Jerusalem. 

Turning to the narrative of Matthew, the history of 
Jesus appears to be as follows : He was born in Bethle- 
hem in Judea, of Mary, betrothed but not yet married to 
her husband Joseph.* Herod, the king of Judea, in- 
structed by a Hebrew prophecy of his advent, had all 
the children of Bethlehem murdered ; b and the parents of 
the infant, under a warning in a dream, escaped into 
Egypt, and remained till Herod's death. Returning after- 
ward, on learning that his brother Archelaus had suc- 
ceeded Herod, they quitted Judea finally, and went to 
live in Nazareth in Galilee. There, the young child grew 
to manhood. When John the Baptist appeared in the 
wilderness of Jordan/ Jesus went to him and was bap- 
tized; but, after John's imprisonment, he came into Gali- 
lee, and changed his residence from Nazareth to Caper- 
naum. 6 Then, he went about all Galilee, teaching in the 
synagogues, announcing the kingdom of heaven at hand, 
and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of dis- 
ease among the people. His fame went abroad through- 
out all Syria, and they brought to him a:// that were taken 
with divers diseases and torments, and those that were 
possessed of devils, and those that were lunatic, and 
those that had the palsy ; and he healed them. And there 
followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee and 
from Decapolis and from Jerusalem and from Judea and 
from beyond Jordan/ 

Seeing these multitudes, and apparently to avoid them, 
he went up into a mountain, and, seating himself, pro- 
nounced to his disciples the immortal Sermon on the 
Mount.' Coming down from the mountain, the multi- 
tude again beset him ; and he cured a leprous man, that 
from the crowd invoked his power. Then, he came to his 
residence, Capernaum ; and a centurion besought his aid 
for a servant sick of, the palsy, and he healed him at a 
distance by his spoken word. He cured Peter's wife's 
mother of a fever ; and, when it was even, they brought 
many persons possessed of devils to him, and he cast' 1 

• Matt, i., 18. •> Matt, ii , 16. Matt, ii., 13, 14, 21-23. * Matt, iii., 13. 

• Matt iv„ 13. 'Matt, iv., 23-25. B Matt, v., 1, 2, 3. & Matt, v., 5, 13-16. 



24 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

them out, and healed all that were sick. Passing across 
the Lake of Galilee, he was asleep while a storm arose 
which terrified his disciples ; but, being aroused, he re- 
buked the storm, and a calm succeeded.* Arrived on the 
other side, he cast devils out of two possessed men ; and, 
conjuring the dispossessed spirits into a herd of swine, 
the herd rushed into the lake and were drowned. 15 Com- 
ing back to his own city, he healed a palsied man, and 
held a colloquy with certain Pharisees, also with some of 
John's disciples. c While still speaking, a certain ruler 
came to ask his intervention in behalf of his daughter, 
who had apparently died ; and he went and took her by 
the hand, and recalled her to life. On his way to the 
ruler's house, a woman diseased with an issue of blood 
obtained immediate relief by touching his garment as he 
passed. d The fame of the raised daughter of the ruler 
filled all the land. Going out of Capernaum, after having 
given sight to two blind men who followed him, and cast 
out a devil from a dumb man, he renewed his preaching 
the kingdom of heaven and teaching. He healed also of 
every sickness and every disease among the people, and 
obtained the following of a multitude of people. 6 

The next event in the career of Jesus, as told by Mat- 
thew, is the sending out of the twelve apostles. No 
other message is given them but to declare the kingdom 
of heaven at hand. Besides this, they are to heal the 
sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, and cast out 
devils. They are to make no provision for their support, 
but to subsist upon the voluntary bounty of those who 
receive them. In giving them this commission, he ex- 
horts them to boldness, and assures them that their fidel- 
ity shall be rewarded in the kingdom of heaven/ 

After this sending out, Jesus himself went into the 
cities apparently of Galilee, to renew his preaching; and 
he is declared to have appealed for proofs of his Messiah- 
ship to the facts generally known, that the blind receive 
their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the 
deaf hear, and the dead are raised.- He also spoke of 
three Galilean cities, Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida, 
as distinguished above others as the theatre of many and 

• Matt, viii., 23-27. ''Matt, viii., 2S-34. c Matt, ix., 1-7, io-:3, 14-17. 
d Matt, ix., 20-26. 'Matt ix , 35. 'Matt. x. E Matt, xi., 1, 5. 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 25 

conspicuous miracles." On a certain Sabbath, he justified 
to the Pharisees the conduct of his disciples, in plucking 
and eating the growing corn, b "and cured a man whose 
hand was withered. The Pharisees deemed these acts 
unlawful, and sought to destroy him ; and when Jesus dis- 
appeared, to avoid their machinations, the multitudes fol- 
lowed him, and he healed them all. d They brought to 
him a man possessed of a devil and dumb ; and he cast 
out the devil, and the patient's speech returned to 
him. e He next went to the seaside, and from a ship 
told the multitude on the shore many parables, among 
them that of the sower and the seed, of the mustard- 
seed, of the leaven, of the hidden treasure, of the 
costly pearl, and of the net and the fish, all in illustration 
of his dominant idea of the. kingdom of heaven. When 
he had finished these parables, he returned from his 
seclusion, apparently to his own city, Capernaum ; and 
there he confessed that his prophetic claims had not been 
honored by his fellow-citizens, and refrained from doing 
many mighty works because of their want of faith in 
him. f 

Now occurred the cruel death of John the Baptist, 
whom Herod had kept for some time in prison ; aad when 
Jesus heard of it, apparently under apprehensions for his 
own safety, he went by ship to a desert place apart, still 
followed it is said by the multitudes, and still exercising 
upon all their sick his wonderful gifts of healing. g In 
this desert place, where there were five thousand peo- 
ple unsupplicd with food following him, if not with 
belief, with wonder, he performed the miracle of multiply- 
ing the five loaves and two fishes, and came walking on 
the sea to his disciples, who were in a ship, as told by 
the writer calling himself John. Sending the multitude 
away, Jesus came by ship to the east side of the Lake 
of Galilee, and there healed by the touch of his garment 
all the sick that came to him.' 1 Some Pharisees of Jeru- 
salem now came to him ; and he held a controversy with 
them about purification, insisting that defilement was a 
thing of the heart, and not the neglect of outward wash- 

1 Matt, xi., 20-23. b Matt, xii., 1, 2, 3-8. c Matt, xii., 10-13. 
'1 M.itt. xii., 1 (, 15. e Matt, xii., 22. * Matt, xiii., 5.1, 57, 58. 
' M itt. xiv., 3, 10, 12, 13. l»Matt. xiv., 15-21, 25, 34-36. 



26 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

ing. After this, Jesus went into the coast of the old 
Phoenician cities, and not only healed the daughter of a 
Canaanite woman, but great numbers of lame, blind, 
dumb, maimed, and many others, to the amazement of 
the multitude. There, also, he repeated the miraculous 
feeling of a large company, who had been three days 
without food, upon seven loaves and a few little fishes." 

We next find Jesus on the coast of Magdala, a city on 
the Galilean lake, south of Capernaum. Some Pharisees 
and Sadducees there asked him to show a sign; and he 
told them no sign should be given them but the sign of 
Jonas, the prophet. At Cesarea Philippi, in the upper 
Jordan, he sounded his own disciples as to what they 
deemed him to be ; and, after Peter had declared that he 
was Christ, the son of the living God, 1 ' he announced to 
them that he must go to Jerusalem, be killed there, and 
be raised the third day. c Six days afterward, Jesus with- 
drew into a mountain, with only Peter, James, and John ; 
and there two angelic forms seemed to converse with 
him, and a voice out of the clouds declared him to be 
"my be'oved son." Returning to the multitude, he re- 
stores sanity to a lunatic. Still tarrying in Galilee, Jesus 
made his disciples exceeding sorrowful by renewing to 
them the prophecy of his delivery into the hands of men, 
his violent death, and his resurrection. He was, how- 
ever, still at Capernaum, his own city, when the tribute 
was levied, which, after some hesitation, he concluded to 
pay. From this time, he appears to seek no longer the 
multitude, and to confine his teaching to the little band 
of his disciples. These he instructs, both by direct pre- 
cept and by parable. d 

Journeying now toward Jerusalem, he comes into the 
Jordan wilderness ; and again the multitude resort to 
him, and he heals their sick. The Pharisees accost him 
with questions about divorce, and he gives to his disci- 
ples his ideas of- the true relation of the sexes. The 
coming to him of the young rich man gives him an occa- 
sion to explain his ideas of the incompatibility of wealth 
and the kingdom of heaven. He tells also the parable 
of the laborers in the vineyard/ Still going toward Jeru- 

nMatt. xv., 17-20, 21-30, 37, 39. bMatt. xvi., 4, 13, 16. c Matt, xvi., 21. 
dMatt. xvii., i-8, 14, iS, 22-27. c Matt, xix., 1-12, 16-30. ''Matt, xx., 1-16. 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 2J 

salem, the foreboding of his death growing stronger, he 
again, in the most direct and intelligible language, tells 
the disciples of his crucifixion and of his resurrection. 
Arrived at Jericho, two blind men importuned him as the 
Son of David to open their eyes ; and he touched them, 
and their sight came to them. a At Bethpage, he orders 
an ass to be taken ; and, being placed thereon, he rides 
into the holy city, the company of disciples casting their 
garments and branches of palms under the feet of the 
animal, and shouting, "Blessed is he that cometh in the 
name of the Lord!" Then immediately followed the 
driving out of the money-changers and sellers of victims 
from the temple, which the Pharisees, though sore dis- 
pleased, could not resent ; for the very children kept up 
the cry with which his disciples had entered the city, 
" Hosanna to the Son of David / " b Jesus himself took 
no timid or apologetic course, but boldly proclaimed him- 
self the Son of God, about to establish the kingdom of 
heaven on earth, and offering its grace and glory to the 
descendants of Israel first, but determined to reject Israel 
and give the kingdom to the Gentiles, if its new king 
were rejected. These declarations he covered in the 
parables of the man and his two sons, of the householder 
and the husbandmen, and of the king's marriage feast; 
but the Pharisees saw the implications clearly enough to 
be greatly incensed. They, however, first sought to 
lessen his influence with the multitude by perplexing him 
with difficult questions, which he not only triumphantly 
answered, but, in his turn, plied them with questions 
which they were not able to answer. d Then, he launched 
against them that terrible invective in the twenty-third 
chapter of Matthew, perhaps never equalled in severity in 
any known human speech, in which he denounced the 
men, whose claim to sit in Moses' seat he had acknowl- 
edged, as hypocrites, oppressors, extortioners, murderers, 
children of hell, a generation of vipers destined to damna- 
tion. When his disciples came to him after the oration, 
he told them of the destruction of the temple, and, in 
answer to their importunity, explained the future events 
which they were to consider signs of the destruction of 

"Malt, xx., 17-19, 30-34. •> Matt, xxi., 1-11, 12-16. c-.Malt. xxi., 2S-41. 
'I Matt, xxii., 1-1.), 15-46. <• Matt, xxiii. 



28 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Jerusalem, of his own coming, and of the end of the 
world ; asseverating that that generation should not pass 
till all these things should be fulfilled, and adding that, 
though heaven and earth should pass away, that declara- 
tion of his should stand." Rising into that allegorical 
treatment which seemed the confirmed habit of his mind, 
he went on to depict the coming of the Son of Man 
as Judge, in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, 
and of % the lord and the servants intrusted with his 
money ; and declared everlasting life the reward of those 
who had ministered to him and to his followers, and ever- 
lasting punishment the fate of those who had rejected 
and neglected them. b 

During these last few days, it seemed to have been the 
habit of Jesus to withdraw for the night to one of the out- 
lying villages, generally to Bethany, where Mary and 
Martha lived; but, though the anointing by the former 
is told substantially as by John, the fact that she was a 
sister of Lazarus, and that he had died and was called out 
of his grave alive by Jesus in the presence of a concourse 
of sympathizing visitors, on one of those very days that 
preceded the arrest of Jesus, is strangely omitted by 
Matthew, as it is also by Mark and Luke. Indeed, the 
latter intimates that the woman who in the house of 
Simon anointed Jesus' feet with precious ointment was a 
disreputable person, whose character Jesus, if he were a 
prophet, ought to have known. d 

The eating of the passover with his disciples ; the lonely 
and ejaculatory prayer in Gethsemane, so different from 
the fervent and long prayer reported by John ; and the 
coming of the officers of the law, guided by the treacherous 
Judas, follow, and the hasty trial and public crucifixion 
close the scene. The incidents of the life of Jesus as told 
by Mark are substantially the same. The variances in the 
Third Gospel need not now be considered. 

The first impression which these narratives, including 
the Fourth Gospel, make upon the sincere mind, is of 
their unreliability as data of authentic history. There is 
in the telling of these stupendous events such an absence 
of detail as to time and place as would create doubt as to 
alleged occurrences in themselves less improbable. Then 

» Matt. xxiv. I' Mai;, xxv. c Matt, xxvi., 6-13. <1 Luke vii., 39. 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 20, 

how can we reconcile the statements made in one place 
with what, with equal positiveness, is affirmed in another ? 
Let a few examples of this inconsistency be cited. How 
could a man have gone about all the cities of Galilee, 
followed by a multitude from Galilee, Decapolis, Jeru- 
salem, and Judea, and from beyond Jordan, and healed 
all the sick, cured all the deaf, blind, and lunatic, and 
in one or two instances restored the dead to life, the 
fame of such miracles extending through Syria, and yet 
his own brothers, as John states, have remained without 
faith in his prophetic pretensions ? How could the people 
of the city where he lived, and where such mighty works 
had been done, have contemptuously rejected him? If 
Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region round about 
Jordan betook themselves to John the Baptist, and re- 
ceived his baptism confessing their sins, as Matthew 
declared, how could Jesus have afterward asked the 
Pharisees in Jerusalem, "Why then did ye not believe in 
John the Baptist " ? In what age of the world and among 
what people could a man have been shamefully crucified by 
the civil government under the accusation of the ecclesi- 
astical authority, and with the fierce concurrence of the 
populace, who had done such works as were by either 
of these writers ascribed to Jesus ? 

There seems to have been in all the ages, beginning 
with the apostolic times, a sweeping and impatient scepti- 
cism, that upon these or some other grounds has denied 
the historic existence of Jesus, and has insisted that his 
life, character, and works, as handed down by tradition, 
are the creation of the fervid imagination of the early 
Christians. Such a doubt, however, seems to have been 
pushed beyond the verge of reason. 

That there was manifested in the world, somewhere 
about the beginning of the present era, a faith for which 
martyrs endured persecution and death, and, if not posi- 
tively new conceptions of duty, new sanctions for and an 
increased devotion to virtue, is accredited by records left 
in literature and secular history, and by such monuments 
of a tidal wave of world-enthusiasm as the Christian 
Church, with what human genius under a devout impulse 
has done in art and architecture to make it and its teach- 
ings impressive. There is no great enlightenment of the 



3<D OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

race, no forward starting in the movement of civilization, 
no incursion of great ideas that have not been due to the 
advent of some man of transcendent genius. 

The French astronomer, Leverrier, predicated the exist- 
ence of the planet Neptune upon certain irregularities in 
the motions of Uranus ; and not only its existence, but 
also its probable place in its orbit, its distance, and its 
mass. The appearance of the conjectured body in the 
place assigned to it, and its observed motions, fully con- 
finned the a priori conclusions of science. In the uncer- 
tainty of tradition, one famous figure stands conspicuous 
and assured in the very age to which the marvellous 
career of Jesus is assigned, — that is, Paul of Tarsus, the 
zealous missionary of a new faith that has nearly con- 
quered the world, the mould of whose mind and character 
in his still extant letters literature preserves. The most 
obvious fact about Paul is that he was surcharged and 
saturated with an immense admiration and deference for 
a person whom he called the Lord, Jesus Christ. How 
largely this person was ideal, how few reminiscences he 
had of his actual sayings and deeds while he lived, Paul 
himself most distinctly discloses. But the ideal points to 
an actual, the affection and reverence to a veritable ob- 
ject ; and we have no more reason to deny the existence 
of Jesus, and make him to Paul what Egeria was to Numa 
or Jehovah to Moses, than to conclude that Socrates was 
the venerable daemon in whose name Plato and Xeno- 
phon taught philosophy to the Athenians. 

But there is another unquestionably historic personage in 
the very position to have been powerfully affected by such 
a character as Jesus : Josephus, whose writings are still 
extant. He was a man of evident probity. He lived in 
Galilee a few years after Jesus, and wrote a history, giving 
a minute account of the prominent personages and events 
of his age. He is nearly silent about Jesus; for the only 
direct notice of the great prophet now found in his works 
is believed to be an interpolation, and is altogether inade- 
quate to the impression Jesus must have made on his 
times, if he was the widely known miracle-worker followed 
by crowds through all the cities of Galilee, as told by the 
synoptics, or the eloquent disputant at Jerusalem, who 
raised the dead to life and gained converts among the 
priesthood and rulers, as told in the Fourth Gospel. 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 3 1 

What the conditions require is a Jesus that shall win 
the faith of Paul, but not of such commanding power as 
to disturb the candid indifference of Josephus. To be 
still more precise, there is demanded a Jesus whom Paul 
shall first recognize only as an impostor and blasphemer 
to be persecuted, but who shall be able to win the re- 
spect, admiration, and life-long devotion of his better sen- 
timents and better instructed mind. 

Asking after this personage, whose light gleams 
through the ages, who and what manner of person 
he was, there are some strong grounds for maintaining 
that his proportions exceeded all the conceptions of him 
held by his disciples ; that, as he was an apparent enigma 
to them while he lived with them, — they always mistaking 
his spirit and misapprehending his language, — so neces- 
sarily, after his death, they could but travesty a character 
and career wholly above their comprehension. To carry 
this method to its logical result, however, is to deprive the 
human life of Jesus of all historic reality, and in idealiz- 
ing to lose his personality. If we may consider him better 
and greater than the words he is said to have spoken and 
the acts he is said to have done, we create him from our 
ideas, and, instead of a normal place and office in human 
history, he becomes an ever-enlarging influence running 
through history, toward which all progress tends. Paul 
betrays mental tendencies toward such a conception of 
the Christ, and it largely affects the theologic philosophy 
of modern Christianity. An ideal of excellence and wis- 
dom separated from all that men have believed of Jesus 
is a phenomenon difficult to account for, since nothing 
can be found in the world except that conception itself ; 
and the basis of that conception must be the evangelical 
tradition of Jesus, however freely it may have been han- 
dled, and however much its grossness and imperfection 
may have been tempered by devout fancy. 

It may on the whole be safely affirmed that what the 
gospel histories, that are really histories, the Apostles 
and the early Church all concur in imputing to Jesus, 
formed a part of his faith and philosophy, and that, when 
these sources of testimony do not concur in any state- 
ment with reference to his thought or deeds, that state- 
ment is not historically verified. 



32 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

We come back then to these narratives, from the ne- 
cessity of the case, and accept them with all their inac- 
curacies, all their indefiniteness, their extravagances of 
statement, their irreconcilable details, not to speak of 
the coolness with which they assert things in themselves 
incredible as the only historical data we have of the life 
of Jesus. 

Is the narrative called John's Gospel to be included in 
this category ? To exclude it relieves our inquiry of the 
chief difficulty. The career of Jesus, as sketched by the 
writers now known as Matthew, Mark, and Luke, had for 
its theatre Galilee, with occasional excursions into the 
Jordan wilderness, across the lakes of Gennesaret to the 
other side, and northward and eastward to the borders of 
Phoenicia. He goes to Judea and Jerusalem only to fulfil 
the prophecies that declare that he must be rejected of 
his nation and crucified. John, on the other hand, gives 
us a life of more than two years passed mainly in Jerusa- 
lem and Judea, with three excursions into Galilee during 
that time. The synoptics declare that Jesus went through 
all the cities of Galilee, healing all manner of sickness and 
disease, restoring the blind to sight, restoring the lame 
to wholeness, casting out devils, and raising the dead. 
Besides this assertion of miracle-working in a comprehen- 
sive way, — boldly challenged by himself as proof of his 
divine mission, and acknowledged by his enemies, — there 
are given in detail, for nearly every day of his public 
preaching, individual cases of supernatural power put 
forth by him, including two cases of the restoration to 
life of persons who were believed to have died. All this 
occurs in Galilee, or outside of Judea. Approaching the 
latter country, his miraculous power seems to pass from 
him with the healing of the two blind men at Jericho, 
unless we give credit to the story told only by Luke of the 
cure of the servant Malchus, whom a disciple had mutilated 
with a sword at the time of the sudden arrest of Jesus. 
He not only does no miracle in Jerusalem, where of all the 
places it was desirable that he should work divine works 
to show his divine origin, but, when asked to show a sign, 
he says emphatically that no sign should be given to that 
wicked generation but the sign of his own resurrection. 

John enumerates but two miracles done by Jesus in 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 33 

Galilee, but afterward details two others, four in all,' and 
asserts that the Galileans received him as a prophet on 
the occasion of his returning to them from Jerusalem, 
hearing of the miracles he had done in Jerusalem and 
Judea. On the other hand, John declares that many- 
persons believed on Jesus at his first going to Jerusalem 
to the passover, when they saw the miracles he did there. 
And he enumerates and particularly describes the heal- 
ing of the impotent man, the restoration of sight to the 
man born blind, and the raising from the dead of Lazarus, 
as done in the presence of many Jews, and well known to 
all the people of Jerusalem. 

But it is apprehended that there are few candid and 
well-instructed believers in Jesus, who will not confess 
that, while they defer to the veracity of the Christian 
Scriptures so unreservedly as to accept as credible the 
account of the miracles in all the Gospels, they feel em- 
barrassed by this demand upon their faith. The story of 
the miracles they will acknowledge, so far from being 
the ground of their faith in Jesus, or even helping 
toward it, is the weak point in the case, the part of the 
doctrine to be apologized for and explained. Had the 
miracles been done in the presence of the people of 
Galilee or of Judea, or were the historic evidence of their 
having been done indubitable, they would powerfully sup- 
port the supernatural pretensions of Jesus. But, coming 
to us in the very records that avouch their improbability, 
they compromise the character of Jesus, just as it would 
compromise the character of Socrates, if all the authentic 
biography we had of him narrated that he talked with 
the devil on the top of the Acropolis; just as the legend 
of Mohammed riding through the air to Jerusalem closes 
our minds to the wisdom of much that he said and wrote. 
So that a judgment on the two distinct biographies of 
Jesus contained in the Gospels, based upon the question 
of miracles alone, would incline to favor the Johannic 
rather than the synoptic, because the wholesale healing 
of every manner of sickness throughout populous Galilee, 
in the latter, shrinks in the former to four miracles in 
Galilee and three in the vicinity of Jerusalem. But dis- 
crepancies of a more serious kind turn the scale of deci- 
sion quite to the other side, — discrepancies involving the 



34 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

presentation of two distinct personalities, holding different 
ideas, possessing different intellectual and moral traits, 
and leading different careers in different countries. 

Matthew says the Sermon on the Mount and all the 
principal parables were spoken in Galilee, where also 
Jesus preached and explained in all the synagogues his 
characteristic doctrine of the kingdom of heaven. At 
Jerusalem, indeed, he is brought in contact with the Phar- 
isees ; but the controversy is not of his seeking. He an- 
swers their questions; but he turns from them to address 
his disciples and the multitude that follow him, and never 
lays aside his allegoric method nor forgets the great bur- 
den of his prophecy, the kingdom of heaven. John gives 
us no Sermon on the Mount, no parables, no special gospel 
of a kingdom of heaven, but exhibits Jesus holding long 
disputations with the Pharisees in the temple, which were 
succeeded by pathetic and confidential conversations with 
his disciples interrupted by his arrest and trial. 

How different as a dramatic representation is the Jesus 
of John from the Jesus of the other Gospels is manifest at 
the most cursor)- glance. Mention has been made of the 
disposition of Jesus, as represented in the synoptics, to 
conceal his didactic purpose under figures and imagery, — 
a disposition which seems as characteristic of his intellect 
as the dialectic method was characteristic of the intellect 
of Paul. It was truly said of him that without a parable 
spake he not unto them. In all but his later conversa- 
tions there is but little self-assertion : he stands behind 
his message. His word of wisdom strikes direct to the 
human reason and conscience, and wins its sway over both 
by its intrinsic truth rather than by authority. Against 
all traditions, even the tradition of the fundamental law of 
the tables, he opposes the reasonableness of a deeper or 
larger law upon the simple authority of I say unto yon. 
There was a certain vigor, clearness, comprehensiveness 
of thought, admirably embodied in language that was 
direct, and forms of expression that had the relish of wit, 
which made his answers so effective, and gave rise to 
the saying of his time, Never man spake like this man. 
In this later age, the sovereign man, the man who com- 
mands a hearing and gains adherents, is the man who 
with pen or tongue can most aptly embody the domi- 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 35 

nant thought, the intellectual tendency of his age. In 
the age of Jesus, as in the age of Socrates, men were 
not allowed the deliberation of studied and premeditated 
speech. The great man was challenged as he walked ; 
and he must solve the riddle of life to the first asker, 
and from his own resources, without time to consult 
an oracle or a volume, or to verify his conjectures by the 
authority of a great name. On a priori grounds, it may 
be fairly inferred that the influence which Jesus gained 
among his contemporaries was more due to those traits 
of genius and intellect by which he responded to the 
demand of his time for a wise word, than to any thauma- 
turgic works by which he impressed their devout imagi- 
nations. 

One can but be struck with the absence of all these 
intellectual traits in what John gives us of Jesus' conver- 
sations. He talks much, he multiplies words, often en- 
feebling and obscuring some obvious idea. It is difficult 
to disenchant words that have been reverently repeated 
by thousands of devout lips through eighteen centuries of 
the glamour of inspiration they have drawn from deeply 
moved souls. If that could be done, we should ask 
ourselves whether there were real eloquence in those 
formally balanced sentences, whether there was any log- 
ical order in those sequences only of sound, whether 
details often trivial did not mar the simple dignity of 
the thought, and whether the inferences and conclusions, 
connected with the antecedent statement by a for or a 
wherefore, did not introduce elements of strangeness and 
confusion. 

Matthew Arnold, in his God and the Bible, while cling- 
ing to the Gospel of John as the truest indication of the 
mind of Jesus, admits that its historical data are nearly 
valueless, and contends that, though the form and style of 
the discourses imputed to Jesus in that Gospel are those 
of the Greek redactor who wrote the book, the ideas — 
elaborated and often misunderstood by the editor, and 
intermixed with his own irrelevant and unauthorized 
comments — are logia, or sayings, of Jesus reported by 
his confidential disciple John. 

Why does Mr. Arnold cling to his prepossession against 
the conclusions of the most careful English and German 



36 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

scholars ? Simply to give effect to the tradition, first 
found in the so-called Canon of Muratori, dating about 
A.D. 175, in this form : "The fourth of the Gospels is by 
the disciple John. He was being pressed by his fellow 
disciples and bishops; and he said : Fast with me this day 
and for three clays, and whatsoever shall have been revealed 
to each one of us let us relate to the rest. In the same 
night, it was revealed to the apostle Andrew that John 
should write the whole in his own name, and that all the rest 
should revise it." Clement of Alexandria, who wrote 
later, says: "John last, aware that in the other Gospels 
were declared things of the flesh and blood, being moved 
thereto by his acquaintances, and being inspired by the 
Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel." 

Must the good sense and good scholarship of Christen- 
dom surrender themselves without question to this unau- 
thenticated fragment of an idle legend ? What is more 
natural than that these ancient writers should be easily 
persuaded by the dramatic illusion, under which the 
writer of the Fourth Gospel succeeded in veiling his 
dogmatic purpose? In an illiterate age, when the very 
data of history were unattainable, the fervid admiration 
of a speculative and mystic convert might easily impute 
marvellous deeds as well as the subtilties of his own 
thought to Jesus as a part of his history and doctrine. 
How easy it is already to idealize the characters and 
actions of Washington and of Napoleon, and that, too, in 
an enlightened age, and when all historical documents 
.are so carefully recorded and so critically studied ! 

Even if the tradition be accepted as testimony, it gives 
little countenance to Mr. Arnold's conclusion, that the 
nucleus of the Johannic Gospel is the record of real say- 
ings of Jesus preserved and disclosed by John. Why 
should John, if he had such sayings in his memory, have 
withheld them till his old age, and then made them 
known, as it were, upon compulsion ? Was he not a wit- 
ness of Jesus, under orders to tell among all nations 
what his master had said? Why should a faithful wit- 
ness of the truth have maintained silence, while all 
manner of unauthorized volunteers, who knew nothing 
at first hand, were filling the young Church with unedify- 
ing gossip about the revered teacher whose memory he 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 37 

loved ? Above all, why should the tried and tempted 
and persecuted brethren in Asia, Africa, and Europe, be 
kept from the strength and consolation which the touch- 
ing and tender words of Jesus before his arrest would 
have given them in their sufferings ? 

While believing the tradition, Mr. Arnold in effect 
repudiates it, when he acknowleges that a gospel, instead 
of being written by John, dictated by the Spirit, and 
revised by the survivors of the twelve apostles, has no 
historic validity, is in its rhetorical form the composition 
of a Greek scholar other than John, and is largely made 
up of the comments and explanations of that scholar; 
and that such sayings of Jesus as it contains are not in 
the form or language that Jesus used. Why should John 
and Andrew have given their sanction to the minutely 
told story of the raising of Lazarus, which, if Mr. Arnold 
is correct, they must have known to be a pure invention ? 

Finally, the tradition itself virtually asserts that the 
Fourth Gospel is not a veritable narrative of incidents in 
the life of Jesus, held to old age in the memory of one of 
his three confidential friends, but the fruit of a special 
spiritual revelation. John is not represented as sitting 
down to recall what he could of Jesus' sayings and acts, 
but as proposing that he and his fellow-disciples shall fast 
three days, and see what after that would be revealed to 
them. The book was such revelation. Clement confirms 
this in saying, " In the other Gospels were declared things 
of flesh and blood." They alone were the real " jlesh-and- 
blood" life of Jesus, — his actual life. "John, inspired by 
the Spirit, wrote a spiritual life," or, to use terms of 
modern significance, an idealized life of Jesus. Not only 
is this the popular significance of the contrasted phrases 
flesh and blood and spiritual, but, singularly enough, al- 
most similar contrasted phrases are used in the Third 
Gospel in the same sense, wherein Jesus, after his resur- 
rection, is made to say, " It is I myself," my flesh and 
bones, and not a spirit/ 1 

So that the oldest tradition about the Fourth Gospel is 
that it is not an actual, but an ideal life of Jesus, as these 
chapters maintain. True, it attributes the authorship by 
implication to John, the apostle ; but Mr. Arnold himself 



$8 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

acknowledges that that apostle had neither the talent nor 
culture for such a work, while the prologue and the First 
Epistle, evidently the author's own achievement, show 
that such a creation lay within the scope of his powers. 

In the Jesus of John, we find no love or even notice 
of the works of nature, no doctrine of the blessedness of 
poverty nor of the incompatibility of wealth with the order 
of the kingdom ; no doctrine of meekness, non-resistance 
and self-denial, or of giving all possessions to the poor ; 
no superiority to the narrow ideas of the Hebrew cultus. 
But we do find Jesus standing within those Hebrew ideas, 
and urging upon the Jews that more liberal interpretation 
of the national prophecies which would permit the recog- 
nition of himself as the Messiah therein foreshadowed. 
We find a doctrine of regeneration by baptism of water, 
of Jesus purchasing salvation for men by his death, of 
the Holy Ghost and his office and relations ; and exhorta- 
tions to love as the great test of genuine discipleship, 
always coupled and contrasted, however, with an intima- 
tion, that death, condemnation, and darkness are the doom 
of those who reject the grace offered to them in Jesus. 
The book is redolent of the controversies of the Church 
that sprang up in the lifetime of disciples that had seen 
Jesus ; and the unmistakable peculiarity of style and 
mode of thought characterizing the three Epistles at- 
tributed to John show that it has with them a common 
authorship. It is the work of a man who, putting his 
thought of Jesus into a dramatic form, is not able to give 
him or any other character a distinct personality, but 
makes him repeat the writer's own sentiments in lan- 
guage that betrays their origin ; for no matter who 
speaks, Jesus, John the Baptist, or the disciples, one 
and all express themselves in the unmistakable, mystical, 
involved, and illogical dialect of the Greek convert, the 
author. 

The Jesus of John is an essentially different character 
from the Jesus of the three other evangelists — as differ- 
ent as is Paul, Moses, or Mohammed from him and from 
each other. The sketches are alike, in that they portray 
a person, who was reputed to be a Galilean, and the son 
of Mary ; who was a master with twelve chief disciples, 
though their names and identity are not agreed upon ; 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 39 

who performed miraculous works, who allowed himself to 
be called the Son of God, and claimed divine appointment 
as a prophet, messiah, savior, and founder of a new order 
on earth or in heaven ; who provoked the hostility of the 
Jewish rulers, and was by their procurement put to death, 
and was believed to have shown himself alive after death. 
Here, the agreement ends. John's Jesus is wholly unlike 
Matthew's in his intellectual traits, in his style of speech, 
in the philosophy that he held, and the doctrines that he 
taught, in all the principal incidents of his personal his- 
tory, and in the very region of the earth, in which he 
made himself known to his fellow-countrymen. 

But the chief objection to the acceptance of the narra- 
tive called John's, as historic, is that, according to it, the 
arrest, condemnation, and crucifixion of Jesus are utterly 
unaccountable. According to this narrative, Jesus had 
been a very familiar figure in the streets of the sacred 
city, and in the precincts of the temple for two or three 
years. He had charmed a credulous and devout populace 
with many conspicuous works of healing, and even, in one 
instance, had raised from the dead an individual, who be- 
came almost as popular with the multitude as himself. 
He had interrupted the solemnities of the national wor- 
ship by long discussions with the chief priests concerning 
his own Messianic pretensions. In the main, those dis- 
cussions had been on his part deferential toward their 
legitimate authority to sit in Moses' seat as the civil and 
ecclesiastical magistrates of the nation ; and only once, 
in the bitterness of his spirit, had he declared explicitly 
that they were the children of the devil. His most ques- 
tionable proceeding, that of whipping the money-changers 
from the temple, had happened years before, and had 
been forgotten ; and the breach of the Sabbath, in healing 
the blind man, had been condoned, — excused, as it was, by 
many of the orthodox. He had fairly outlived his unpop- 
ularity ; and the raising of Lazarus had effected so power- 
ful a diversion in his favor, that his enemies confessed 
they could make no headway against him, and that the 
whole people seemed inclined to believe on him. And 
yet, in the very flush of that popularity and success, the 
evangelist surprises us with the recital, that Jesus was 
beset by the police, captured without an attempted res- 



40 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

cue or the slightest demonstration of resistance on the 
part of his friends and was carried away, condemned and 
crucified, because that very populace, upon whom he had 
made such a favorable impression, fiercely demanded his 
death, after the executive power had strenuously sought 
to effect his pardon and release ! The council of the 
chief priests and elders, with some show of fairness, de- 
liberated over his accusation, and arrived at the conclu- 
sion, with no appearance of dissent, that he was worthy 
of death ; although a large body of intelligent citizens, 
some of whom may have sat in the council that con- 
demned him, had been present a few days before, when 
a man four days buried had come forth from the grave 
alive at the invocation of the man put upon his trial, and 
although it was generally believed in Jerusalem, at the 
time of his arrest and trial, that he had done this stupen- 
dous and beneficent miracle. If it is required to believe 
that these things were done as a part of a supernatural 
machinery, which brought about the death of Jesus for 
foreordained heavenly ends, we are not required to con- 
sider human probabilities. The possibilities of human 
conduct, when ordained by the supernal powers, are infi- 
nite. But, if human nature is substantially the same in 
all ages, and human conduct is governed by intelligible 
motives, then it is impossible to understand how the 
death of Jesus was brought about under such conditions. 
The Jewish people, who sat in the Sanhedrim, and who 
composed the multitude that clamored for the crucifixion, 
in fine who created the public opinion which made it 
impossible for even the authority of the Roman governor 
to effect the deliverance of the victim, must be con- 
sidered to be no more sceptical and no less susceptible 
to superstitious influences than are ordinary men. If it 
had been believed that one of the prisoners put to trial 
during the Reign of Terror, a few days before his trial, 
had in the environs of Paris restored a dead man to life, 
neither could the revolutionary tribunal have condemned 
him, nor would the mob have permitted his execution. 
It cannot be believed that there is a government so im- 
pious, or a mob so cruel, or a horde of robbers or savages 
so degraded, as not to be awed with reverence or para- 
lyzed with terror by the very presence of one who had 
shown himself capable of raising the dead to life. 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 4 1 

On the other hand, the mainly concurrent testimony of 
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, presents a perfectly probable 
and intelligible explanation of the judicial murder of 
Jesus. According to them, he was a Galilean, a dweller 
in a remote and disreputable province. If he had been 
born in Judea, it was during a visit of his mother, which 
under no circumstances could give him a right to claim 
that province as his country. He had passed his whole 
lifetime in Galilee. Though a rumor of his miracles had 
reached Jerusalem, and the ecclesiastical rulers had sent 
a deputation down to that region to inquire about them, 
the conclusion the messengers arrived at, that all the 
miracle-working was by the power of Beelzebub, showed 
that, in the inveterate prejudice of the orthodox Jews, 
Jesus was less, rather than more, esteemed at Jerusalem 
for these questionable practices. Heresies and fanati- 
cisms had been no unusual phenomena of the times, and 
Galilee had before been the theatre of them. Josephus 
relates several popular religious and political outbreaks ; 
and the learned Gamaliel recites, in the fifth chapter of 
Acts, how Theudas and Judas of Galilee had successively 
come forward with Messianic pretensions, and much 
larger following than Jesus had, and had been brought 
to nought. 

At length, this unknown provincial fanatic, with a 
feeble following of illiterate fishermen and women, not all 
of them quite respectable, ventures to come to the sacred 
city itself. His person is unknown, he has no friends in 
the city and cannot even lodge there over night. He 
may have done miracles in Galilee. He does none here. 
Challenged to do them, he peremptorily declines. He 
enters the city with a most offensive ovation, — a clamor 
of the Galilean converts, mostly children, proclaiming 
him the son of David coming in the name of the Lord. 
Of course, the implication of this cry was revolutionary 
in the extreme. It was a threat both to Ccesar and to 
the High Priest and the rulers. What, to the astonished 
Jews, must have looked like a mob, at once blasphemous 
and fantastic, proceeded in open day to the temple itself, 
where Jesus, armed with a whip, drove out the money- 
changers and sellers of doves. When we consider how 
little he had to do with the ceremonies of the national 



42 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

worship, that he was believed to have spoken contemptu- 
ously of it and of its priesthood, and that the very practice 
of selling victims for sacrifice was not only a necessary 
and decent convenience for those worshippers who came 
from a distance, but was specially sanctioned by the 
written Hebrew law itself, the anger which this proceed- 
ing aroused among the leading Jews becomes quite intel- 
ligible. Jesus, however, was in no mood to let their 
anger cool. His evident purpose in coming to Jerusalem 
was to precipitate this controversy. He takes care of 
his life and liberty by going out at night to find safe 
lodgings in the country, only that he may declare to the 
full the denunciation that had been for many days swel- 
ling in his heart. 

His next demonstration is in the temple itself, where 
he chided the Pharisees for their rejection of John; told 
against them the parable of the two sons, of the wicked 
husbandmen and of the rejected wedding guest; and 
wounded their self-love by a triumphant answer to all the 
knotty points of legal casuistry, in which they sought to 
entangle him. After they had thus been fairly put to the 
worst, and had left him master of the situation, holding 
the very temple itself, from which the people were wont 
to receive in silence from their lips the authoritative ex- 
positions of the will of God, Jesus launched against them 
that masterly invective of the twenty-third chapter of 
Matthew, unequalled for its severity in the literature of 
the world. Of course, the whole city were on fire with 
indignation and passion. Public sentiment turned de- 
cisively against the Galilean reformer. His very disci- 
ples forsook him ; and those who had come up from 
a remote province to see their master take possession 
of the throne of David, and give them honored seats on 
his right hand and on his left, denied that they ever 
knew him. For such a state of popular feeling, it is 
easy to see that Matthew and his copyists give an ade- 
quate reason ; and under that feeling, sweeping all before 
it, it was perfectly easy for the Sanhedrim to get Jesus 
arrested without any attempt at rescue, to get him con- 
demned in a hasty and illegal way without a dissenting 
vote of a single ruler, and even to draw the populace 
around the Roman palace, to defeat by their fierce hatred 
the avowed purpose of Pilate to release him. 



SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 43 

Enough has been said in this preliminary chapter to 
indicate why such historical data, as will be appealed to 
in this discussion, will be taken exclusively from the Syn- 
optic Gospels ; while the Fourth Gospel, an undoubtedly 
genuine and legitimate literary creation of the awakened 
thought of the first and second centuries, will be some- 
times cited, as a drama, poem, or review might be to-day, 
as giving a better exposition of an historical situation or 
character than the annalists, who had more literally fol- 
lowed the incidents or the documents. In presenting in 
detail the ideas of Jesus, further confirmation will be 
found of the position already taken, while a more careful 
critique of the Fourth Gospel itself, as indicating that 
culture and tendency which has adapted Christianity to 
expanding civilization, will be added to complete the 
whole subject. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS. 

" Whoever can read the New Testament with a fresh eye must be struck 
with the prominence everywhere of the Messianic idea. It seems to be the 
ideal framework of the whole, — of history, parable, dialogue, of Pauline 
reasoning, of apocalyptic visions. 'Art thou he that should come ? ' This 
question gives the ideal standard by which on all hands, and on the part of 
disciples,"relations, enemies, of Saul the persecutor and Paul the apostle, 
the person and pretensions of Christ are to be tried. His birth, his acts, his 
sufferings, are so disposed as to fulfil what was spoken by the prophets, so 
that the whole programme of his life would seem to have pre-existed in the 
national imagination." — James Martineau. 

"The Messianic faith is the soul of the entire New Testament, giving 
unity to the Gospels, Epistles, and Apocalypse, and making Christianity 
a vital organism." — Francis E. Abbot. 

Every great historical personage, to be understood, 
must be studied in connection with his dominant idea. 
While a man puts into his dominant idea a certain 
force and quality of his own genius, it in turn reacts 
upon and modifies his character. No one would under- 
take to comprehend the distinctive character of Luther, 
without making himself acquainted with the controversy 
into which Christendom was drawn between him and the 
Pope, and with the protest made in the interest of a 
reformed religious faith against the doctrines and prac- 
tices of the Catholic Church. Copernicus, Laplace, and 
Newton without their investigations and discoveries in 
reference to the mechanism of the celestial bodies, Shak- 
spere without his dramas, Beethoven without his music, 
Wilberforce and Garrison without the abolition of slavery, 
would be characters of no historical significance and of 
no definite identification. 

The dominant idea of Jesus, by which all his ideas are 
to be examined and entertained, and by which his charac- 
ter and pretensions are to be estimated, was his doctrine 
of the kingdom of heaven. Not to understand, at least in 
some general way, what his system was of a new order of 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 45 

things to begin in the world, known to his thought as the 
kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, is not to under- 
stand his true function in history ; and until this central 
idea of his, around which was grouped all that he said 
and taught, is appreciated, only confusion and incertitude 
will be attained in trying to master his system of ethics, 
or his theory of the future destiny of the world and of 
mankind, or to properly determine the order of being to 
which he belonged. 

Of all the words recorded by Matthew as having been 
uttered by Jesus in his lifetime, more than one-fourth are 
directly upon the subject of the kingdom of heaven ; and 
-much of what is original and peculiar in his ethical teach- 
ing can only be understood or made capable of practice, 
by accepting it as the law, not of the human society of 
his time or of our time, but of that new order which he 
believed himself about to inaugurate in the place of such 
society. When it is considered how much of the conver- 
sation imputed to him related to incidents of his daily 
experience, how much of it was in answer to persons inter- 
rogating him upon subjects prominent in their thought, 
rather than in his, it becomes more apparent how sponta- 
neously his mind reverted to the theme which seemed to 
possess and inspire it. 

Of this doctrine of the kingdom of heaven, the earliest 
writers of the Gospels have more to say than the later. 
It almost disappears from the narrative of John. When 
the time had passed, plainly indicated by Jesus for the 
kingdom of heaven to begin, with unmistakable signs of 
great physical catastrophes, the believers naturally began 
to accommodate their faith to a scheme of things allowing 
a greater security, and a longer endurance of the old order 
of the world, and to lay less stress upon what related 
to the coming kingdom of heaven. The expectation re- 
mained, but it was less vivid ; and cares for other and 
urgent things diminished its pressure upon attention. 
As all the narratives of the evangelists are supposed to 
have been written, after the expectation, created by the 
words of Jesus of a change, which should put the secular 
power more into the hands of believers, had been weak- 
ened by frequent disappointments and delays, it is proba 
ble that those narratives contain less rather than more of 
what Jesus actually said relating to his dominant idea. 



46 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

When Jesus left the privacy of his humble life as an 
artisan and went out among his countrymen in the capa- 
city of a prophet, this is what he is reported to have said, 
not in one place or at one time, but as the comprehensive 
summary of what he said in all places and at all times : 
" Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." After- 
ward it is said, he went about all Galilee, teaching in 
their synagogues, healing diseases indeed, but preaching 
the gospel or good news of the kingdom, i.e., of heaven* 
When he taught his disciples apart upon the mountain, 
his opening declaration was that the poor shall possess 
the kingdom of heaven. b The beatitudes which follow 
all relate to reward and compensation in heaven and in 
the heavenly state, oftener called kingdom. Continuing 
the same discourse, he speaks of ranks of eminence in the 
kingdom of heaven, of the standard of rectitude which 
will qualify to be received into it. c In the prayer he dic- 
tated for use by his disciples, the petition for the coming 
of the kingdom of God is the first and chief petition.' 1 
The abstention from anger, the reconciliation of all enmi- 
ties, no matter if purely the fault of another, the termina- 
tion of all controversies are required; the obliteration, if 
necessary, by excision, of all lustful desires, the absolute 
forgiveness of injuries, the meeting of all exaction and 
extortion and affront by concession and courtesy, an abso- 
lute carelessness of all that concerns the sustenance of 
life, an omission of all thought and foresight, are de- 
manded, on the ground, that in the kingdom of heaven 
there is ample reward for all suffering, ample compensa- 
tion for all loss and wrong, and in the large economy of 
God all the physical wants are amply provided for. The 
kingdom of heaven, however, is not for the crowd. Jesus 
preached no doctrine of the virtue of the people ; and his 
kingdom was not open for the masses, whom revolutions 
and seditions have always nattered. The way into it was 
by a narrow gate, which only a few found, while a broad 
road led to destruction/ Many even of his nominal dis- 
ciples would be driven from its portals as workers of 
iniquity, and in the near end the rains, floods, and winds, 

a Matt. iv., 24 ; ix.,35; Mark i., 21, 39; Luke iv., 15, 43, 44. 

bMatt. v., 3. cMatt. v., 19, 20. dMatt. v i., 10. 

eMatt. v., vi. f Matt, vii., 13, 14. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 47 

emblems of some secular catastrophe, would sweep to their 
final fall all who had listened to his words without obey- 
ing them. a 

When the Roman centurion, whose servant was sick, 
told Jesus, that he might cure the invalid without incur- 
ring the trouble of a personal visit, he was so pleased at 
such an exhibition of faith, that he declared that strangers 
and aliens from the East and West should come and sit 
with the patriarchs in the kingdom of heaven, while the 
children of the kingdom should be thrust into the outer 
darkness. 1 ' Again, when he saw multitudes thronging to 
his proclamation of the kingdom, he wished for more 
helpers to proclaim it, c and, fired with this thought, imme- 
diately afterward commissioned his twelve chief disciples, 
and, besides giving them power to heal all kinds of dis- 
ease, authorized them to declare only what had been the 
burden of his own preaching, — "The kingdom of heaven is 
at hand."* He gave them no other message. He told 
them they need not meditate beforehand what they should 
say, if brought before the civil tribunals as seditious per- 
sons." He told them they should be ridiculed, hated, and 
persecuted ; that they must not resist, but flee from city 
to city, always bearing the proclamation of the impending 
heavenly order. And he comforted them with the assur- 
ance that their heavenly Father would care for them, and, 
if slain in his cause, would recognize and honor them, 
when his kingdom was established ; and he asserted that, 
in their fleeing from persecution from city to city, as ad- 
vised, they should not have gone over the cities of Israel 
before the Son of Man should come, — that is, in his king- 
dom/ This title, Son of Man, by which he began to des- 
ignate himself, was used by the prophet Ezekiel through- 
out his prophetic rhapsody as the medium by which 
Jehovah communicated in vision his purposes. It was 
also used by Daniel, a prophet then and ever since held 
in highest repute, because, more definitely than any of 
his class, he is believed to have possessed the power of 
soothsaying, always a most fascinating talent, to have fore- 
told with rare precision the successive ascendency and 
destruction of the Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and Roman 



Man. vii., 2i-2.?, 2.}, 27. 


1) Matt, vii 


i., 11. 


cMatt. ix., 36-3S. 


'i Matt. >.., 7. • Matt. 


x., 17-19. 


1 Matt 


x., 22, 23, 26-33. 



48 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESTS 

empires, and to have stated in some cabalistic and insolu- 
ble figures the term of the whole present order of the 
world. Daniel, however, does not mean by Son of Man 
a prophet, but some angelic, immortal, and divine being, 
greatly honored by the Ancient of Days, and to whom 
was given dominion and glory, an everlasting and inde- 
structible kingdom over all nations and all languages. It 
is difficult to determine in which sense Jesus used this 
title ; and it may have been in both senses, and under the 
belief that he was at the same time the true-sighted 
prophet, to whom Jehovah communicated his purposes, 
and the coming king, whose authority all nations were to 
acknowledge. 

The more Jesus talked with his disciples upon his in- 
spiring theme, the loftier rose his confidence and enthu- 
siasm. He told them not to expect peace and acquies- 
cence, but dissensions, hatreds, wars, and martyrdoms." 
They were not to be dismayed even by death itself. To 
lose life in such a cause was to find it again in the coming 
kingdom, in which even those who had given a disciple 
a cup of water were not to be without their reward. b He 
assured them that whosoever believed them believed him, 
and that to take up the cross and follow him was the only 
way to make themselves worthy of him. This so aptly 
described the modes of thought by which the disciples of 
the earlier centuries must have comforted and strength- 
ened themselves under the martyrdoms and persecutions 
of the Jews and of the Roman emperors, long after the 
death of Jesus, that there is a strong suspicion that these 
words, particularly this allusion to the cross, were injected 
into the conversations of Jesus after the crucifixion. But 
as this suspicion, carried into its details and its conse- 
quences, as has already been shown, will rob us of nearly 
all historic data concerning Jesus himself, it must be 
repressed. 

Jesus had already with fulness and detail unfolded his 
ethical ideas in the hearing of his disciples. But the 
principal apostles gave afterwards such lamentable exhibi- 
tions of their utter misconception of his spirit and inca- 
pacity to understand his philosophy, that he would only 
have compromised himself by intrusting them with the 

a Matt, x., 34, 39. b Matt, x., 41, 42. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 49 

discretion of teaching them ; and their attempts on 
several occasions to apply his principles and communi- 
cate his doctrines had involved him in difficulties that 
had tried his temper/ But any messenger could com- 
municate the startling intelligence that the kingdom of 
heaven was at Jiand, and that a catastrophe was impend- 
ing over the human race, against which precautions that 
required an amendment of character were processes alto- 
gether too slow. Taken all together, this commissioning 
of the apostles indicates a firm prepossession in the mind 
of Jesus of a conflict between the order of the kingdom 
of heaven and the secular order, internecine and irrepres- 
sible, in which his personal friends were to be active 
agents, and which was to end in the triumph of his 
adherents, and their reward in that period in which they 
lived. b 

A short time after these events, Jesus declared to the 
multitude about him that John Baptist, then awaiting 
death in prison, was the last of the old prophets ; and that 
with him terminated the old order ; and that, greatest as 
he was of all prophets, the least in the kingdom of heaven 
was greater than he ; and that from John's time till then 
men are rushing into the kingdom of heaven and making 
its blessedness their own by a kind of violence. As all 
the qualification of the messengers seemed to be to have 
tongues to tell the startling message, so, he said, all the 
qualification of the listeners was to have ears to hear it/ 1 
Remembering how the respectable and intelligent people, 
who in his own home, Capernaum, and in the neighboring 
cities, Chorazin and Bethsaida, had coldly disdained his 
pretensions and the glories of his coming kingdom, he 
declares that, in the day of judgment they shall be 
brought down to hell. He blessed the simple ones, who 
had been able to see what the wise and prudent over- 
looked ; he invited to him the laborers and the oppressed, 
and declared that all things were given to him of God, 
and that he only had the true knowledge of God, and 
could communicate it to whom he would. 1 

When certain Pharisees attributed to demoniac agency 
his manifest power to cast out devils, he assured them 

"Matt, xv., i 6. >> Matt, x., 7-23. c Matt. xi. F 7-14. '1 Malt, xi., 15. 

e Matt, xi., 20-24. f Matt, xi., 25-30. 



50 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

that Satan would not be likely to cast out himself, and 
that, if he (Jesus) had cast out devils by the power of 
God, then it was manifest that the kingdom of God had 
come unto them, — the heavenly order had indeed already 
begun/' 

When afterward the multitude thronged about him, he 
took his stand upon a small vessel, and addressed them, 
grouped upon the shore, in a series of allegories, all repre- 
sentative of the kingdom of heaven, its incidents and 
leading features. 1 ' These parables were not all intelli- 
gible, even to his disciples ; and he condescended to give 
them personally some explanations; for, he said, it was 
lawful to communicate to them the mysteries of the king- 
dom of heaven. As to the multitude, he declared his 
purpose not to enlighten them ; and he said they were the 
people doomed by the prophet Isaiah to blindness and 
dumbness, lest God should convert and heal them. c In 
these allegories, those who heed his proclamation of the 
kingdom of heaven, and for that blessed estate joyfully 
sacrifice every other advantage, are called the children of 
the kingdom :• they are also called the just and the right- 
eous, as the rest of mankind are called the wicked and 
the children of the wicked one. His disciples are not to 
be disheartened by the present aspect of all the world 
being against him. Small as the leaven is, it will leaven 
the world ; and, from the little seed he is planting, a tree 
shall grow, in whose branches the birds of the air shall 
lodge.' 1 Quietly as these two classes now live together, 
and so much alike that only the discriminating eye of the 
Judge can detect whose are his, in the near end of the 
world they shall be separated like tares from the wheat, 
like bad fish from among the good, and those who are 
not his shall be cast into a furnace of fire, where shall 
be wailing and gnashing of teeth. "Then," he declared, 
quoting from a vision of the prophet Daniel, "shall the 
righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their 
Father." It is not absolutely necessary to infer that 
Jesus had in his thought a conception of a gross and 
material destruction by fire of those, who at his coming 
had not believed his message ; but when, after the assur- 
ance of a purpose to explain confidentially to his friends 

"Matt, xii., 24-28. l> Matt, xiii., 1-3. c Matt, xiii., 1 1-17. <• Matt, xiii., 18-52. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 5 I 

what he had avowed he intended to disguise from the 
multitude, he uses language that he knew would convey 
to them images only of a physical and summary destruc- 
tion and punishment, there is only an a priori prepos- 
session, upon which to entertain the conjecture that he 
had nothing in his mind but a picture of a purely spir- 
itual condition. Of some impending changes (and he 
doubtless had in his mind that coming of the Son of 
Man with his angels during the lifetime of some of his 
auditors), he thought there were so many palpable signs, 
that he told the Pharisees, if they were as prescient, as 
they were about the harbingers of the weather, they 
would readily discern them. a 

Some undeclared time after the telling of these para- 
bles, Jesus was with his disciples at Cesarea Philippi; 
and there he is said to have disclosed to them his purpose 
to go to Jerusalem. But he announced that the chief 
priests and elders would persecute and put him to death. 
He told his followers, as he had before, that they must 
not be afraid of death, nor try to save their lives, but must 
follow him, if necessary, in his crucifixion ; to save their 
lives was to lose them, to lose their^ lives for his sake was 
to find them, — i.e., in his kingdom/ For what profit is it 
to gain the whole world, he asked, and lose one's own 
soul? For the Son of Man — that is, himself, who was 
to be killed at Jerusalem a few days hence — shall come 
again in the glory of his Father, with his angels, and 
then shall reward every man who had made sacrifices for 
him ; and truly, he said, closing this impassioned exhorta- 
tion, there be some standing here which shall not taste 
of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his king- 
dom. b This mood of exultation and expectation did not 
leave him ; for, a few days later, he expressed impatience 
because his disciples could not cast out a devil, and 
assured them, if they had faith, they might say to a 
mountain : c Be moved to yonder place, and nothing should 
be impossible to them. The kingdom in his fervid 
thought had already come; and the powers which he 
would confer in the new order to do great works, to lay 
down and take up life, would be given now by the new 
king to those who had great faith. 

* Matt, xvi., \. I'Mntt. xvi., 13-28. cMatt. xvii., 16, 17, 20. 



52 OPIXIOXS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

When his disciples asked him who was greatest in the 
kingdom of heaven, he told them whoever should humble 
himself and believe on him as a little child was the 
greatest, and that whoever should offend such a trustful 
believer had better have been cast into the sea with a 
millstone about his neck ; that to enter his kingdom 
they must not hesitate to sacrifice an eye, a hand, or a 
foot ; and that every little one of his had an angel in 
heaven always looking upon the very face of God. a He 
commended those who for the sake of the kingdom of God 
had been celibate ; he told his disciples it was scarcely 
possible for the rich to enter that kingdom ; and soothed 
his disciples, who asked what reward they should have for 
leaving friends and property and all things for his sake, 
by promising that, when he should sit in the throne of his 
glory, they should sit on thrones judging the twelve 
tribes of Israel, and should, for all the possessions they 
should give up, receive back a hundred-fold and inherit 
eternal life. b 

Fired by the ever-present vision of the kingdom of 
heaven, this question of the disciples roused his spirit to 
new disclosures of its scenes and solemn compensations. 
For, said he, continufng the conversation, the kingdom of 
heaven is like a man who was a householder, that has no 
true scale of wages, but gives to the latest laborer the 
same reward as to the earliest, and allows no man to 
claim, in the day of recompense, that he was the earliest 
convert or the oldest disciple. 

On his way to Jerusalem, he again declared his death 
and resurrection ; and, when the mother of James and 
John came to ask that her sons might be viceroys of the 
new kingdom, he did not deny that there were such 
places to be filled by those for whom the Father had 
prepared them ; but he said the scale of rank in his king- 
dom, unlike the kingdoms of the world, was the scale of 
service, and not princes, but servants, obtained chief 
precedence in it. c 

Besides the direct way of promulgating an idea or de- 
claring an event about to happen, besides Jesus' charac- 
teristic way of foreshadowing these in a parable, there 
was what may be called the national way. The old 

a Matt, xviii. , i-ii. bMatt. xix., 3-30. c Matt, xx., 1-28. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 53 

prophets were wont to resort to physical demonstrations 
by way of making their warnings and vaticinations more 
impressive to their hearers. Thus, Zedekiah, in the time 
of King Jehoshaphat, made horns of iron, as it turned out, 
only to give rhetorical emphasis to his prediction, that 
the king should prevail against Syria. " Thus saith the 
Lord," was his message, "with these thou shalt push 
Syria, till she be consumed." 11 Hosea declared, on two 
different occasions, that he was commanded to cohabit 
with an adulterous woman, that he might illustrate the fals- 
ity of Israel in leaving Jehovah, her true husband. b And 
now Jesus, not with any serious expectation of ushering 
in the kingdom of which he was to be king, — for he seems 
to have believed his rejection by the Jews and his tempo- 
rary death are to precede that event, — but to give an im- 
pressive physical demonstration of what he had been 
repeating to a stolid and indifferent people, prepares the 
triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and has himself an- 
nounced to the daughter of Zion as her king, coming 
meek and sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an 
ass. The narrative does not attribute to Jesus the de- 
tails of this affair. But as he directed the animal to be 
procured upon which he intended to ride, as he entered 
cordially into the character assumed by him of the 
prophetic king of Zion, and as Luke narrates that he 
justified his disciples for this ostentatious ovation in lan- 
guage which showed that he was acting under the press- 
ure of an intense enthusiasm, it is just to infer that the 
whole demonstration was premeditated by him, to give 
impressiveness to the message he was bringing to the 
sacred city itself of the coming of the kingdom of heaven.' 1 
He must have been somewhat disappointed. To the 
decorous and conservative Pharisees, the spectacle was 
offensive, and prejudiced them in advance against the 
gospel he came to promulgate. From this time to the 
end, he evidently anticipates his rejection, and withholds 
a message that he has assured himself will only be de- 
spised. The temper of the city is such that, after the 
imposing entry into it, followed up by his driving from 
the temple the money-changers and sellers of victims, he 

"II. Cliron. xviii. . 10. '» Hosea i., 2-3; iii., 1-3. cMatt. xxi., 1-16. 

'1 Luke xiw, 39, 40. 



54 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

deemed it not safe to remain there over night, and up to 
the day of his arrest went every night into some outly- 
ing village to lodge." To the Pharisees and their adhe- 
rents, he declared afterward only the punitory and de- 
structive aspects of the coming of the kingdom of heaven. 
He told them, the publicans and the harlots go into 
the kingdom, while they refused, 1 ' that in persecuting 
and slaying him they were killing the son of the husband- 
man, just as they had slain his servants, the prophets; 
and that they were drawing down upon themselves a 
miserable destruction. "The kingdom of God," he said, 
" shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing 
forth fruits thereof." To his own disciples, he spoke with 
exceeding bitterness against the scribes and Pharisees, 
whom he charged with keeping themselves out of the 
kingdom of heaven, and not suffering others to enter it. 
He declared that the damnation of hell awaited them, 
that all the evil deeds of themselves and their fathers 
would be visited upon them, and that the woes he had 
uttered should come upon that generation. Invoking 
Jerusalem in tones of mingled indignation and pity, he 
announced that the city should not see him again till it 
should say, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of 
the Lord," evidently reflecting with some disappointment 
that the city had not joined in that hosanna, and believ- 
ing that when he came again in the clouds with his angels, 
in the glory of his kingdom, every knee would bow, and 
every tongue would confess him.' 1 

Relieved of the contradictions and contempt of the 
Pharisees, by which his spirit seemed much disturbed, 
Jesus, on the eve of events which he felt assured and 
which even to any intelligent observer betokened his 
speedy death, reverts to the society of his followers, and 
in answer to a direct request by them, to tell them what 
should be the sign of " thy coming, and of the end of the 
world," proceeds to unfold with great fulness and preci- 
sion the whole scheme of the kingdom of heaven, as it 
was then shaped in his anticipation. 

The twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew has been some- 
times considered a prediction by Jesus of the destruction 
of Jerusalem, which took place about forty years after 

■ Matt XxL, 17, 18. b Matt. xxi., 2S-46. cMatt. xxii., 1-15. dMatt. xxiiL 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 55 

his crucifixion. Concerning this, it must be said, however, 
that Jesus never manifested the slightest interest in secu- 
lar history. Nothing that he ever said indicated that he 
had any knowledge, outside the annals of his own people, 
of the changes of empires in the past, or that he built any 
hopes upon beneficent political changes to occur in the 
future. His destitution of patriotism and of the national 
feeling, his profound indifference to the shame of being 
subject to the Roman sway, and his light estimate of the 
glories of the earlier times and of greatness of the proph- 
ets, kings, and patriarchs, were rather conspicuous. Then 
there was nothing remarkable about the capture of Jeru- 
salem, which was not so much destroyed by Titus as it 
had been by Nebuchadnezzar; in fact, it has never been 
destroyed, but always has been inhabited as a city. The 
destruction of Carthage, of Babylon, of Nineveh, of Tyre, 
of Sidon, of Memphis, of Baalbec, of Ephesus, and of very 
many Greek and Roman cities, was far more complete and 
summary than that of Jerusalem. Jesus himself warned 
his disciples that it was not mere secular revolutions, such 
as are always going on, such as were rife in his age and in 
that following and preceding it, of which he wished them 
to take note. " Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. 
Nations shall rise against nation ; there shall be famines, 
earthquakes, pestilences," — he might have added, as 
there always have been, — but the end is not yet. It is 
not of these events or their like that I wLh to speak, but 
of that consummation indicated by the abomination of 
desolation standing in the holy place, which is the sign, 
which he that readeth may well understand, — the sign for 
instant, precipitate flight, the sign of the coming on of 
tribulation, such as never was since the beginning of the 
world, and from which the elect of God can hardly be 
saved. Heed not those who shall then proclaim Christ 
to be here or there, and go not forth to find him ; for, as 
the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth unto the 
west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be. Imme- 
diately after, the sun shall be darkened, the stars shall 
fall from heaven, all the heavenly powers shall be shaken, 
and the Son of Man, coming in the clouds of heaven, shall 
gather his elect from the four winds of heaven ; and he 
declared, with the most solemn form of asseveration he 



56 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

ever used on any occasion, " This generation shall not pass 
away till all these things be fulfilled." * Heaven and earth 
may pass away : this, my word, shall not pass away. His 
very hearers, the men then living and standing with him, 
he conjured to be vigilant ; for they could not tell when 
he, their Lord, should come, and he promised that the 
faithful servant, found watching for the coming of his 
Master, should be made ruler over all his house. Then, 
resuming his allegoric method, he said : The kingdom of 
heaven shall be likened unto ten virgins waiting by night 
for the bridal procession of their Lord, the prudent ones, 
who had provided themselves with oil, to be let in to the 
marriage feast, the improvident ones, whose lamps had 
gone out, to be refused admission. b It is like a proprie- 
tor leaving his property to trustees, and returning after a 
journey to reward the thrifty with gifts and honors, but 
to punish the slothful and wasteful by consignment to dun- 
geons and torture. And finally, dropping his allegory, he 
declares that, when he so comes in his glory and sits upon 
the throne of his kingdom, all nations shall be gathered 
before him, and that he will separate them as goats are 
separated from sheep, the sheep being those who received 
and ministered either to him or his followers, the goats 
those who had rejected or neglected them. The sheep 
he will receive into immortal life, the goats shall go away 
into an endless punishment. In drinking wine with the 
twelve just before his arrest, Jesus said that he would not 
again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when 
he should drink it new with them in his Father's king- 
dom ; and, when interrogated by the High Priest, this was 
his reply : "Hereafter shall ye see the Soji of Man sitting on 
the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven,"* 
From this recapitulation, it becomes apparent how 
much the expectation of the kingdom of heaven was in 
the thought of Jesus, and how large a topic it was of his 
discourse. Are we not fully justified in the inference 
that it was his dominant idea? It was the theme upon 
which all his characteristic teachings were based, the 
underlying image which all his parables disclosed to the 
faithful and childlike disciples, but designedly concealed 
from the apprehension of the critical and the wise. It 

» Matt. xxiv. b Matt. xxv. c Matt, xxvi., 29, 64. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 57 

was the favorite subject, to which, when left to the 
promptings of his own mind and not diverted by the 
questions of those about him, he always recurred. As he 
began his public career by announcing that the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand, so he closed it by declaring to his 
affectionate and devoted followers with touching pathos 
what was equivalent to saying, The next time I eat and 
drink with you, it will be in the kingdom of my Father; 
and to the chief of his enemies, the High Priest, You who 
condemn me to death now shall see me sitting on the 
right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven. 

It is very rare, perhaps it is impossible, for a single per- 
son to import into the world a wholly new idea. Before 
the seed of a great thought can take root and bear fruit, 
the ground must be prepared. Every great discovery, 
every germinal truth, proclaims itself in the anticipation 
of seekers, in the blind gropings of those who feel after it 
without quite apprehending it. Newton's discoveries in 
physics were foreshadowed and anticipated by his pre- 
decessors and compeers. Columbus discovered America 
through the provocation of other adventurous voyagers in 
unknown seas. Garrison demanded immediate emancipa- 
tion after the humanitarian spirit had begun to permeate 
modern civilization. 

It is not surprising that the dominant idea of Jesus is 
not found to be wholly original with him, but to have 
been anticipated by men who lived before him, and to 
have been shared by his countrymen and contemporaries. 
John the Baptist preceded Jesus in the specific procla- 
mation, " The kingdom of heaven is at hand."* Luke men- 
tions a priest, Simeon, as a just and devout man, waiting 
for the consolation of Israel ; and a prophetess, named 
Anna, who conferred with those in Jerusalem, looking 
for redemption. 1 ' And Mark speaks of Joseph of Arima- 
thea, by whose liberality the body of Jesus obtained hon- 
orable sepulture, as one waiting for the kingdom of 
heaven.' 1 The two disciples walking to Emmaus after 
the crucifixion are represented by Luke as speaking of 
Jesus, as the one they had hoped would redeem Israel.' 1 
They might have derived this hope from what he had 
said; but there is evidence that, besides all he taught, 

• Matt, iii., 1-2. b Luke ii., 25, 36, 38. "Mark xv., 43. ALukexxiv., 21, 



58 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

the expectation of some deliverance for the Jewish nation 
and its sudden elevation to great glory, accompanied by 
the overthrow of the Gentile powers, had widely pervaded 
the popular heart. There had been fanatics and advent- 
urers, who had taken advantage of this national feeling 
to incite sedition, and to make themselves leaders of 
popular revolutions. 

The golden age of the Greek was in the remote antiq- 
uity. The Jews, like the modern peoples, saw their 
golden age in the future ; and that which in the devout 
mind paints itself as the millennium, and which comforts 
the popular heart under trials and privations as the- good 
time coming, to the Jews of all ranks was the sceptre of 
David restored to a prince of his house, under whose sway 
God would restore them to prosperity, and punish with 
destruction all their enemies. 

The expectation which we find affecting the priesthood, 
the common people, the devout and enlightened classes, 
John the Baptist, Jesus and his disciples, was based upon 
the vaticinations of the national prophets, whose writings 
in highly ornate and poetical language, a unique collec- 
tion among the literature of antiquity, were carefully pre- 
served, and read and chanted as a part of the national 
worship every Sabbath in the synagogues. 

There was a certain extravagant method of interpreta- 
tion adopted by the Christians of the first and second 
centuries, and which appears in the evangelists, by' which 
passages from the Pentateuch and from the Psalms came 
to be considered as predictions of the coming and office 
of Jesus ; but the most casual reading shows that they 
had no such purpose or significance. In fact, it is open 
to debate whether the Messianic expectation in the form 
in which it was held by Jesus and his followers, or as 
held by his countrymen, the Jews, had any reliable basis 
in prophecy. It is certain that some of the so-called 
Messianic prophecies and what the early Christians, the 
evangelists, and apostles, and Jesus himself, confidently 
considered predictions of the Messiah, clearly related to 
early historic persons, and to political events nearly 
contemporaneous with the time of their writing. 

Making all allowance for the extravagance begotten of 
the fierce controversies between the adherents of the new 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 59 

faith and the orthodox Israelites, by which even Moses 
was claimed to have foretold Jesus, and temple songs in 
honor of Jehovah attributed to David were assumed to be 
pre-recognitions of Christ, there still remained among the 
priesthood and the common people a well-defined expec- 
tation of a glory to come to their nation, a restoration to 
it of more than its primitive prosperity, the subjugation 
and defeat of the powerful heathen empires that had suc- 
cessively oppressed it, and a sovereign of the lineage of 
David brought back to reign in Zion, who, if not person- 
ally immortal, was to have a kingdom, to which there 
should be no end. 

Isaiah had sung that Jehovah should choose again 
Israel, and set him in his own land, and that there he 
should hold captive those who had held him captive, and 
have rest from sorrow, fear, and bondage. 11 At the blow- 
ing of a trumpet, they who were ready to perish in 
Assyria, and the outcasts of Egypt, should worship Jeho- 
vah in Zion in Jerusalem. b The ransomed of Jehovah 
should return to Zion with songs and perpetual joy. e The 
feeble nation should become strong.* 1 Israel should eat of 
the riches of the nations, and boast himself in their glory ; 
and aliens and strangers should become his servants."' Je- 
hovah should delight again in Jerusalem, and take from 
her the voice of weeping. In great prosperity, her citi- 
zens should build houses and plant vineyards, and live, 
saint and sinner, a full lifetime of one hundred years. 1 

The gloomy and unpatriotic Jeremiah, who had been 
put in prison for falling off to the Chaldeans, and depress- 
ing the national courage by his counsel to make no resist- 
ance to the hosts of the Assyrians, had indicated a time, 
when Israel should not speak of Jehovah as his deliverer 
from the slavery of Egypt, but as he who led him out of 
the North country, and from all countries whither he had 
driven him, to dwell again in his own land." Jehovah 
should bring him again from Chaldea to his own land, and 
plant him there not to be plucked up.' 1 Jehovah should 
gather Israel as a shepherd gathers his flock. Israel 
should rejoice on Zion in the plenitude of wine, of oil, of 

" Isaiah xiv., 1-3. h Isaiah xxvii., 13. [saiah xxxv., 10. 

"1 Isaiah lx., 22. L ' Isaiah lxi., 5, 6. f Isaiah Ixv., 19-22. 

5 Jeremiah xxin., 6-8. h Jeremiah xxiv., 5-7. 



60 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

the young of flocks and herds. The priest should be 
satiated with fatness, and the people with the goodness 
of Jehovah. 1 Israel should be to Jehovah again a name of 
joy, and all the nations should fear and tremble for the 
goodness and prosperity his God should procure him. b 

Ezekiel had declared, speaking in the name of Jehovah. 
" I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you 
out of all countries, and will bring you into your own 
land"; and ye shall dwell therein, and be my people, and 
I will be your God. c Amos had written that Jehovah 
should bring again the captivity of his people Israel, that 
they should prosper greatly in the land whence they 
should never again be expatriated;' 1 and Zephaniah that 
the restored and ransomed people should be a name and 
a praise among all the people of the earth. 6 

In spite of the contemptible character of many of their 
kings, the Jews had always looked back to their monarchy 
with longing regret, and could not consider themselves 
as either free or prosperous under any other government 
than that of their own sovereigns of the lineage of David. 
Their sacred writings expressed and kept alive this national 
aspiration. A child should be born upon whose shoulders 
the government should be, to be called "Wonderful, Coun- 
sellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince 
of Peace," whose kingdom should increase forever, and 
who should sit upon the throne of David to establish it 
forever and ever/ The days should come when Jehovah 
would raise unto David a righteous branch, who should 
reign a king and prosper, and execute justice in the earth.- 
My servant David, Jehovah had said, shall feed my flock 
and be their shepherd ; and I will be their God, and my 
servant David shall be a prince among them. h Israel and 
Judah shall be one, and they shall have one king and 
one shepherd, even David, my servant. 1 The kingdom 
to come was to be an everlasting kingdom, not to pass 
away or be destroyed ; and its king all people, nations,- 
and languages should served 

There was to be an era of peace, the peace of glory, 
prosperity, and content for the Israelites, the peace of 

a Jeremiah xxxi., ,<>-,.,. >' Jeremiah xxxiii., 9. c Ezekiel xxxvi., 24, 2S. 

d Amos ix., 14, 15. •' Zephaniah iii., 20. f Isaiah ix., 6, 7. S Jeremiah xxiii., 5. 

h Ezekiel xxxiv., 22, 23. > Ezekiel xxxvii., 22-24. J Daniel vii., 14- 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 6 1 

subjection and docility for all the other nations. Out of 
Zion in Jerusalem, the destined king should judge nations 
and rebuke many people; and they should beat their 
swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning- 
hooks, and learn war no more. n Of the peace his reign 
should inaugurate there should be no end. The very 
wild beasts should lose their ferocity, and nothing should 
hurt or destroy in all the holy mountain. 15 Violence 
should no more be heard in the land, nor wasting nor 
destruction.* 

The peace, however, was to be the peace of conquest, 
the peace after a struggle, victory and triumph over all 
enemies. This was quite in accord with the savage tem- 
per of the times, the fierce spirit which the exterminators 
of the Canaanites continued for ages to cherish. Here is 
the way this feeling flashes out of the sombre, national 
literature. David had been a man of blood whom the 
sacred poetry of his people represented as singing praises 
to Jehovah for teaching his hands to war and his fingers 
to fight. In his old age, the blood he had shed, not 
always even in legitimate warfare, sat heavy on his soul ; 
and his tender conscience restrained him from building 
and consecrating a temple to the God of righteousness. 
So the new David was to be a warrior, and was to sit 
down upon the right hand of power, after he had made 
his enemies his footstool. 

The kings of the earth take counsel against Jehovah, 
and against his anointed (king), saying : Let us break their 
bands and cast off their cords. Jehovah shall laugh, and 
sitting in the heavens, shall have them in derision. He 
calls the anointed his Son, and promises to give him the 
heathen for an inheritance, the uttermost parts of the 
earth for a possession, that he might break them with a 
rod of iron, and dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel.' 1 
Jehovah at the right hand of the anointed, sitting with his 
feet on the neck of his enemies, shall strike through kings 
in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the 
heathen, he shall fill the places with dead bodies, he shall 
wound the heads over many countries. Say to them of 
a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not, your God shall come 

» Isaiah ii., 3, 4. >> Isaiah xi., 6-9. c Isaiah lx., 18. 

<1 Psalms ii., 2-9. e Psalms ex., $,(•. 



02 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

with vengeance and retribution. a It was the Messiah, clad 
in garments glorious with blood, who was represented as 
declaring : " I will tread them in mine anger, and trample 
them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon 
my garments, and I will stain all my raiment. For the 
day of vengeance is in my heart, and the year of my 
redeemed is come." b "For, behold, Jehovah will come 
with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render 
his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. 
For by fire and by his sword will Jehovah plead with all 
flesh ; and the slain of Jehovah shall be many." c "He shall 
smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the 
breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked."' 1 "Every 
battle ... is with confused noise, and garments rolled in 
blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire. For 
unto us a Child is born," etc. The harvest is ripe, the 
press is full, the vats overflow ; for their wickedness is great. 
The day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The 
sun and moon shall be darkened, and the stars withdraw 
their shining. Jehovah shall roar out of Zion, and the 
heavens and earth shall shake; but Jehovah shall be the 
strength and hope of the children of Israel. 1 The day of 
the Lord cometh ; for, said Jehovah, I will gather all 
nations against Jerusalem to battle, and it shall be taken. 
Then shall Jehovah go forth and fight against those 
nations. His feet shall stand on Mount Olivet, which 
shall be cleaved by a great valley running east and west. 
It shall be light in the evening as in the day. Living 
water shall go out by Jerusalem, half to the Mediterra- 
nean, half to the Dead Sea. All the south land shall 
become an elevated plain, and the land of Israel shall be 
peopled and never more destroyed, and Jehovah shall be 
king over the whole earth. And this shall be the plague 
wherewith Jehovah will smite all the people that have 
fought against Jerusalem : their flesh shall consume away 
while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall con- 
sume away in their holes, and their tongues shall consume 
away in their mouths. A great tumult from Jehovah 
shall be among them, and they shall lay violent hands on 
each other. And Judah shall fight at Jerusalem, and 

i Isaiah xxxv., 4. •> Isaiah lxiii., 2-4. c Isaiah lxvi., 15, 16. 

d Isaiah xi., 4. l ' Isaiah ix., 5. f Joel iii., 13-16. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 63 

gather there the wealth of the heathen — gold, silver, and 
apparel — in great abundance. And everyone that sur- 
vives of the nations, that went against Jerusalem shall 
become worshippers of Jehovah, and come up there yearly 
to celebrate his feasts ; and whosoever among them shall 
not come up to these feasts shall be punished with drouth 
upon their lands. Everything, even the bells of the 
horses, shall be consecrated to Jehovah : among the 
nations, that come up to the house of Jehovah to cele- 
brate his feasts, however, the accursed Canaanite shall be 
forever excluded/ "The day cometh that shall burn as 
an oven ; and all the proud, all that do wickedly, shall be 
stubble." "Ye shall tread down the wicked; for they 
shall be ashes under the soles of your feet, in the day 
that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts." 13 

So fixed in the prophetic mind was the idea of a grand 
retribution, convulsion, and reversal of situations between 
the chosen people and their powerful and numerous ene- 
mies, whose prey and spoil they had been so many years, 
that they came to mention it as that day, the grand assize, 
the judgment and condemnation of the nations, the vindi- 
cation of the right of Jehovah to be worshipped as the 
chief among the gods, — an idea which, modified by Chris- 
tian eschatology, became the modern day of judgment. 

It may not be strictly pertinent to this discussion to 
inquire what is the real value and significance of this 
prophetic literature. The prophets appear to have been 
a school of devoted patriots, who adhered more to the 
monotheistic idea and the ritual of national worship, than 
they did to the fortunes of the reigning kings, or to the 
tendencies of the popular sentiment. Of this lower type 
of patriotism they were, as a class, quite destitute. Jere- 
miah had incensed and disheartened his countrymen with 
his melancholy vaticinations of defeat and subjugation. 
Indeed there seemed ample reason for his gloomy fore- 
bodings in the magnitude of the Assyrian empire, and m 
the petty resources of the miniature kingdom of Judea, 
as well as in the fate that was known to have befallen 
nations much more able to resist so great a power. All 
the prophets were too plain-spoken and too little flatterers 
of the national pride to be popular. They had suffered 

"Zech.iriah xiv. >> Mnlachi iv., i-r 



64 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

more or less persecution, and some of them had been 
put to death. Their writings, however, were true to the 
national spirit : they all recognized what every Israelite 
believed, that his fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were 
chosen men of God, and that their lineage was favored 
among the races of the earth as the chief beneficiaries 
of the Deity, the only nation that he had not given over 
to work evil and inherit destruction. They all flattered 
the national hope — born of their calamities, defeats, and 
enslavements — of a restoration to more than the glories 
of David, more than the wealth and prosperity of the 
patriarchs. So that, when the generation which the 
prophets had denounced for their vices and idolatries 
was dead, and especially when a remnant of the captives 
returned from Babylon with chastened hearts and more 
enlightened minds to rebuild Jerusalem and re-establish 
the national worship, it is not surprising, that the pro- 
phetic writings came to be cherished by the people, and 
their poetic fervor to be ascribed to the direct inspiration 
of Jehovah. 

It is a modern conception that the world is subject to 
general laws, and that society and government develop 
their existence and are maintained by a compliance with 
certain principles. The ancient mind, if capable of form- 
ing such an hypothesis, had scarcely data enough upon 
which to base it. To the ancient observer, if one coun- 
try, kingdom, race, and city prospered, grew rich and 
populous, and subdued its neighbors, it was not because 
it was peopled by a more brave and intelligent race, or 
had advantages of soil, sea-coast, or mines, or a stronger 
and better organized government, but because it had a 
more powerful god than its neighbors, or had been careful 
to propitiate him by a more punctilious performance of 
worship. This idea runs through the whole ancient 
literature of the Jews, is in fact the one. doctrine taught 
and reiterated in it all. 

The writings of the Hebrew prophets possess for us 
the quality, which all serious literature has in a greater 
or less degree, of supplying incentives to piety and virtue. 
They are, as Paul aptly expresses it, "profitable for 
correction and instruction in right living." But we shall 
best understand the influence and function of these 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 65 

poet-prophets in the development of the national char- 
acter of the people for whom they wrote, if we perceive 
that they were primarily political writers. They wrote 
upon political subjects. Their inspiration was their 
patriotism, and their object 'the public good. As the 
French or American political pamphleteer believes that 
universal suffrage, legislation by a popularly elected gov- 
ernment, free-trade, common schools, public morality, are 
all essential elements of national prosperity, so he will 
write, with what eloquence and zeal he is capable of, 
in advocacy of these measures. Such views, in the age 
of Isaiah, Hosea, and Ezekiel, were quite inconceivable. 
The only assured opinion to which they had come was 
that national prosperity, abundant harvests, wealth of 
gold, silver, and raiment, brave and victorious armies, 
conquests over rivals and enemies, were the gifts of 
Jehovah, made generous and propitious by worship, sac- 
rifices, and decorous conduct. Accordingly, they advo- 
cated a faithful adherence to Jehovah, in a style suited to 
the rude temper of the times and the rude fervor of their 
own spirits. Their style to a cultivated taste seems 
extravagant, the everywhere obtrusive illustration of the 
worship of alien deities indecent, and the callous indiffer- 
ence of the writers to the most horrible suffering and 
absolute extermination of all people, who were not He- 
brews, and would not become their servants, as incon- 
sistent with the merciful instincts of good men. But we 
look in vain for the humanitarian spirit of our time 
among this primeval people, whose literature is to be 
studied in connection with a study of the people who 
produced it, and the age in which it was produced. 

Returning to the illustration of the patriotic pam- 
phleteer, who devotes his pen to the advocacy of educa- 
tion, popular morality, and good government, — as he draws 
illustrations and examples from the past, so he does not 
hesitate to forecast the future, without claiming any en- 
lightenment other than what comes of a close observation 
of the course of history and the natural results of human 
conduct. He feels authorized to declare with as much 
assurance as if the truth had been revealed to him by a 
divine oracle, or the voice of God speaking out of a cloud, 
that a government systematically ignoring the interests 



66 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

and rights of the people, as represented in a legislative 
assembly, will inevitably become an oppressive despotism ; 
that the neglect of popular education will be followed by a 
loss of liberty, and that, through the decay of the national 
morality, luxury, effeminacy, corruption, conquest, and sub- 
jection ensue, and consume a nation. The prophets had 
a single remedy for all the evils of their times, a single 
safeguard against all the perils of the future ; and, so far 
as the faithful service of Jehovah related to conduct, and 
to the practice of such virtues as temperance, chastity, 
industry, frugality, honest dealing, and truthfulness, the 
remedy and the safeguard were certainly efficacious, and 
the truth of their revelations absolute. They did not work 
out their teachings in an ethical, didactic way. If they 
had attempted that, they would have been more unheeded 
by their countrymen than they were. They gave them in 
a poetic form, to seize the imagination of their hearers. 
They concealed their didactic purpose and ethical impli- 
cations under vivid pictures of the material prosperity 
that should attend a patriotic attachment to the national 
religion, and of the horrors of slavery, slaughter, and 
mutilation that should befall them in the invasion of 
heathen nations — become the ministers of Jehovah's ven- 
geance for the rebellion of his people. 

It is by no means probable that the prophetic writers 
among the Hebrews claimed any knowledge of the future, 
other than of this kind. The changes of empire in the 
East had been so rapid and summary that it is as safe to 
predict the downfall of a luxurious, populous, and corrupt 
city or kingdom, as to predict of youth, exulting in the 
plenitude of its powers, that old age will weaken and 
death destroy its strength and beauty. 

All the more remarkable and precise prophecies, which 
have been claimed by the early and later Christians to be 
applicable to the Messiah, are plainly applicable to persons 
and events contemporaneous with their utterance. Those 
prophecies, which, like the visions of Daniel, have been 
considered foreshadowings of the course of world-history, 
may correspond in some general way with what is now 
known of the prominent events of the age, and before 
the age, when they are believed to have been written. 
All semblance of accord, however, between these vague 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 6 1 / 

and indefinite visions and the actual sequel of events dur- 
ing the Christian era wholly disappears. The changes of 
empire from Chaldean to Persian, from Persian to Greek, 
are sketched with tolerable accuracy. The prophetic eye, 
in peering into the modern world, saw only dim shapes 
which the most devout ingenuity has utterly failed to 
find even typical representations of the growth and decay 
of states that have succeeded the Roman Empire. 

It may likewise be remarked that giving to the pro- 
phetic declarations, of which a concise summary has been 
in these pages recapitulated, the full force of a divine pre- 
diction, they do not necessarily imply a divine or even 
immortal king of the new kingdom which was to over- 
throw and make subject all other kingdoms. Isaiah had 
indeed said, he shall be called — not shall be — Wonderful, 
Counsellor, the great and mighty God. Such epithets 
were quite consonant with Oriental exaggeration, with 
the adulation and deification of kings among the Egyp- 
tians, Assyrians, and even the Romans. The kingdom 
was to be an everlasting kingdom. The king was to 
be born, was to be a child, was to be of the lineage 
of David ; but, as it is plainly said that men were to live 
out their days to a hundred years, it is implied that 
there was to be a perpetual succession of wise and good 
kings, each gathered to his fathers in a good old age, after 
a glorious and prosperous reign. Indeed, while the Per- 
sians on one side of them and the Egyptians on the other, 
in their literature and their monuments, were indicating- 
how much the thought of a future life and a judgment, 
which fixed the fates of men in it, affected their daily 
conduct ; while even the pleasure-loving Greek had his sad 
and pensive moods, in which he bewailed the brevity of 
youth and life, — the practical Hebrew, from his great law- 
giver, Moses, down nearly to the advent of Jesus, con- 
temptuously ignored all such considerations, and insisted, 
even in his most spiritual moods, that life was good enough, 
if there was enough of it, and if he could have a fair 
chance in it, quite content after such fortune to be gath- 
ered to his fathers. 

But what is chiefly to be considered is not what the 
significance of the prophetic writings is, but what it was 
held to be by the countrymen of Jesus at the time he 



68 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

lived. Everything in the New Testament indicates that 
the belief was general that these writings were predic- 
tions, made upon the authority of the Supreme Being, of 
events that were to occur. All these prophecies, so far 
as they related to a restoration of the Israelites to their 
own land, and the glory of their new kingdom, were 
uttered after the principal part of the nation had been 
carried into captivity ; and the more explicit and definite 
prophecies were uttered during the continuance of the 
captivity of the remnant of the nation in Assyria. The 
feeble political existence which the restored Jews main- 
tained for a few years, under the sovereignty of the suc- 
cessors of Cyrus until the conquest by Alexander, was 
too transient and too wretched to be accepted as the 
realization of the extravagant promise of an everlasting 
dominion, established at Jerusalem over all people and 
nations and languages, though this was the restoration 
which the exiled patriots had in their mind, and pictured 
in the glowing imagery of their hopes and of their in- 
domitable pride of race. So they waited for the consola- 
tion and redemption of Israel, and have waited through 
all the succeeding centuries till the present day, the most 
touching and pathetic, but not the only instance in his- 
tory, of a race cherishing from generation to generation 
an aspiration which often becomes the enthusiasm and 
force by which it is realized. 

Jesus himself evidently shared this expectation of his 
countrymen, and derived it from them. The phrases, king- 
dom of heaven and kingdom of God, are not found in the 
Old Scriptures, that set forth the glories of the golden age 
to which the Israelite looked forward. But as the king- 
dom is represented to be set up by God himself, and as 
the sovereign was to be the Son of Man coming in the 
clouds of heaven, the name kingdom of heaven was of very 
natural derivation, and probably had become a popular 
term before John the Baptist used it or Jesus adopted 
it from him. The kingdom of heaven by that name must 
have been everywhere familiar in the popular thought, or 
the disciples in the very earliest stages of their disciple- 
ship would not have been commissioned to go and make 
everywhere proclamation that it was at hand. It is fairly 
inferrible that the Jewish people had as distinct idea of it 
as Christendom has to-day of the millennium. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 69 

It must then be considered that Jesus derived from his 
times the name kingdom of heaven, and that it represented 
a sequence of secular events, among which were promi- 
nent the recognition of a chosen people by Jehovah, their 
establishment in a perpetual kingdom which should domi- 
nate the kingdoms of the world, with Jerusalem for the 
seat of empire, the hostility of the nations against this 
kingdom, their total defeat and overthrow, with a rem- 
nant saving their lives by submission and servitude and 
by the adoption of the true religion. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS. 

"No less remarkable is the over-faith of each man in the importance 
of what he has to do or say. The poet, the prophet, has a higher value for 
what he utters than any hearer, and therefore it gets spoken. The strong 
and self-complacent Luther declares with an emphasis not to be mistaken 
that 'God himself cannot do without wise men.' Jacob Boehmen and 
George Fox betray their egotism in the pertinacity of their controversial 
tracts, and James Naylor once suffered himself to be worshipped as the 
Christ. Each prophet comes presently to identify himself with his thought, 
and to esteem his hat and shoes sacred. However this may discredit such 
persons with the judicious, it helps them with the people, and it gives heat, 
pungency, and publicity to their words." — Emerson's Essays, second series. 
Essay on Nature. 

In endeavoring to learn how much Jesus remodelled 
in his own mind the national aspiration for the kingdom 
of heaven, we must not disregard certain indications that 
he came gradually to his own conceptions, and that he 
accepted with hesitation and diffidence the impression 
that at last forced itself upon him, that he was himself the 
Son of Man, the heir of the kingdom of the world. It is 
in the early part of his career, and mainly in the Sermon 
on the Mount, that what Matthew Arnold denotes as the 
characteristic of the mind of Jesus, "his sweet reason- 
ableness," becomes apparent. He seemed to the people 
to speak with authority, but that was because he appealed 
directly to their moral sense and did not quote Scripture, 
which seemed to be the peculiar didactic method, they 
had been accustomed to in the preaching of the scribes. 
He did not make himself prominent, nor exact any homage 
to or belief in himself. So peculiar is this method in 
contrast with his later teachings that we hesitate to 
accept as a part of what he actually said, " Many will say 
unto me in that day, Lord, Lord," a and believe it may 
have been injected afterward into a discourse so wholly 
impersonal and self-forgetful. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS Jl 

Still, it must have been not only the inspiration that 
the kingdom of heaven was near, and that he must join 
John the Baptist, and reinforce himself with disciples, 
and go everywhere and be its herald, that urged Jesus 
in his remarkable career, but the conviction that he him- 
self hag! some larger function to perform in the stupen- 
dous events about to strike the world with awe. 

It was with real diffidence that he received the frank 
declaration of Peter, that he believed him to be the 
Christ, the Son of God, that he rebuked the possessed 
persons, who loudly imputed to him a divine nature,'' 1 
and that he begged his disciples to tell no man that he 
was the Christ. b 

It is hard to account upon rational principles for any 
high enthusiasm, or for the determination of the soul 
toward any special study or achievement. It comes to 
the spirit of men by those mysterious movements of the 
spirit which have been called genius and inspiration. In 
Jesus, the conviction that he was a divine and providen- 
tial person, which he undoubtedly had, may have sprung 
from the consciousness of a substantial exemption from 
the sensual appetites and sordid ambitions that determine 
the ordinary quality of humanity, of a clear insight of 
moral truth, and of an eloquence in illustrating and con- 
veying it which all who listened to his speech seemed 
to have attested, and lastly of a certain power over de- 
pressed and nervously diseased and enfeebled persons 
to relieve and cure them, out of which the legends of the 
miracles grew. 

In coming to the conclusion that he was the national 
Messiah, — a claim, by the way, other men made before 
him and after him, — the mental processes might have 
gone on thus : How can a man who was born of human 
parents, who remembers his uneventful, humble, labo- 
rious youth of thirty years, whose brothers, sisters, and 
mother all the people know, be the person whom Jehovah 
calls my Lo?'d, and invites to sit at his right hand ? How 
can he be the Son of Man, brought to the Ancient of 
Days upon the clouds to be the crowned king of the 
nations ? How can a man who has patiently borne all 
insult, and whose faith it is to resist not evil, come up 

• I, ukc iv., 34, 35. b Matt, xvi., 20. 



72 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

from Edom with garments gloriously reel with the blood 
of enemies he has trampled to death in his fury? 

But Esaias had declared : My servant, my elect, 
upon whom Jehovah has put his spirit shall not strive 
nor cry, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street ; 
but the isles shall wait for his law. a " He is despised and 
rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with 
grief." He was despised, and we esteemed him not. He 
was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our 
iniquities. Jehovah hath lain upon him the iniquity of 
us all. He was oppressed and afflicted. He is brought 
as a lamb to the slaughter. He was taken from prison h 
and from judgment. He was cut off from the land of 
the living, and his grave was made with the wicked. 
Daniel, too, had explicitly announced that Messiah should 
"be cut off, but not for himself." And Zechariah, 
whose descriptions of the kingdom of heaven had been 
fuller of details than the writings of any of the prophets, 
had in prophetic vision invoked the daughter of Jerusa- 
lem to behold her king coming to her, just, and having 
salvation ; lowly, and riding upon a colt, the foal of an 
ass.' 1 And, again, he had summoned the sword to awake 
against the shepherd and companion of Jehovah, and 
smite him, so that the sheep should be scattered. 

So, then, there is a Messiah coming in the clouds, 
coming red with the blood of his enemies and in the heat 
of his fury, and a Messiah coming lowly upon an ass's 
foal, a man of sorrows, to be oppressed and afflicted, to 
be tried and imprisoned, and cut off from the living, and 
buried with the wicked. Are there, then, two Messiahs ? 
No, Jesus reasoned, but two comings of one Messiah. 
And, as the glorious king cannot be rejected and slain 
after he has come in the clouds to sit on the throne of 
an everlasting kingdom, his life of sorrow and death of 
shame must precede all that glory. 

Jesus told the Pharisees in Jerusalem a few days before 
his arrest a parable which discloses with great particular- 
ity his idea of the connection between these two comings. 
Jehovah was a householder, who had a vineyard, with a 
wine-press enclosed with a hedge, and defended with a 

"Isaiah xlii., i, 2, 3. b Isaiah liii. c Daniel ix., 26. 

<1 Zechariah ix., q. e Zechariah xiii., 7. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS J^ 

tower. The Jews were certain husbandmen to whom 
he let the vineyard, expecting to receive its income. The 
prophets were his servants, whom he had sent from time 
to time to collect the dues, whom the wicked husband- 
men had beaten, stoned, and slain. Jesus himself was the 
husbandman's son, whom they caught, cast out of the 
vineyard and slew, but who should be the head stone of 
the corner in the new kingdom of heaven, falling on his 
enemies and grinding them to powder."- The Messiah 
comes first to do the same office as the prophets, and to 
invite to repentance. He meekly submits to obloquy 
and death, and makes no appeal to his divine power; 
but, rejected, he becomes the avenger and punisher of his 
persecutors. 

It was an essential feature in the popular idea of the 
kingdom of heaven, that it was to be the empire of Israel. 
All the prophets, who were believed to have predicted the 
event, assigned its glory and prosperity to the favored 
nation as their heritage and recompense. Daniel, speak- 
ing in a Syriac tongue, and before the Babylonian court, 
had affirmed that the people of the saints of the most 
high God should possess the kingdom ; but, as Jehovah 
obtained in the royal proclamation of the Assyrian mon- 
archs the title of the "Most High God," h it is probable 
that his auditors understood by Daniel's language the 
sacred, elect, consecrated people of Jehovah, or, in other 
words, the Jews, excluding from the promise, perhaps, 
those who had in the captivity lapsed into the worship of 
other gods. 

It was quite alien to what is told of the character of 
Jesus that he should entertain an anticipation so narrow 
and national. Though he told the Syro-Phcenician woman 
that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of 
Israel, that was evidently to test the strength of her faith. 
His real sentiment was early expressed in the declara- 
tion: "Many shall come from the east and west, and 
shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in 
the kingdom of heaven;' 1 but the children of the king- 
dom shall be cast out." He had but little patriotism: 
the national pride and exclusiveness of his countrymen 

» Matt, xxi., 33-45. >> Dan. vii., 27 ; iii., 26; iv., 2. 

c Matt, xv., 24. «' Matt, viii., 1 i. 



74 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

excited his contempt. The Roman domination he had 
no controversy with. He paid taxes to it, fully recog- 
nized its secular authority, treated its officials with a 
courtesy and respect which he habitually withheld from 
the accredited successors and representatives of the old 
hierarchy, that held to the national traditions and main- 
tained with great strictness the national worship. He 
never, by word or deed, gave the least sanction to those 
seditious risings of over-zealous patriots, which vexed the 
peace of the country, and of which his own native prov- 
ince, Galilee, had been the principal theatre. 

With such sentiments, it is not surprising that the 
teachings of the prophets became at length considerably 
transfused by his own ideas, and that, if in the beginning 
he believed, that Scripture could only be fulfilled by a 
kingdom universal and perpetual given to the people of 
his nation, he came later to the belief of the utter repudi- 
ation and rejection of his nation, and of a kingdom trans- 
ferred to those who should accept him as a deliverer and 
sovereign. Nor was this idea at all alien to the general 
tenor of the Hebrew Scriptures. All the Hebrew writ- 
ings had represented the choice of Israel as provisional, 
and conditional on his obedience and faithful devotion. 
Rejection had been the steady discipline, by which the 
idolatry of the earlier ages had been punished. Every 
successful invasion, every waste of territory, the domina- 
tion of Philistine, Egyptian, Syrian, Assyrian, Greek, and 
Roman powers, was always represented as Jehovah's re- 
sentment of their falling away from his worship. Moses 
himself was represented in Deuteronomy — though the 
book is now believed of comparatively modern composi- 
tion — to have set before the Israelites a blessing, if they 
obeyed the commandments of their God, a curse if they 
went after other gods. This is the one lesson of all the 
historians, the inspiration of the poets, and the burden of 
the prophets. 

In the memorabilia which are preserved of Jesus, he 
does not seem to have given to what may be called the 
national party a locus penitentiae. Toward the Pharisees 
and Sadducees he always demeaned himself, as if he had 
adopted the intolerant thought of his master, John the 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 75 

Baptist, who had said to those classes, " O generation of 
vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to 
come?"* It is one of the indicia of the unreliability of 
the Johannic Gospel, that it represents Jesus as holding 
long and feeble controversies with the scribes and Phari- 
sees at Jerusalem, for the purpose of maintaining his 
claim to a place in the divine dispensation in reference to 
the peculiar people ; while the other evangelists represent 
him as hostile to the Pharisees from the first, and meet- 
ing even their courteous overtures with suspicion and de- 
nunciation. Arrived at Jerusalem, he weeps over it. and 
says : If thou hadst known the things that make for thy 
peace, but now they are forever hid from thine eyes. 
The judgment has already come, the rejection of the 
daughter of Zion is complete. 1 ' 

But shall the rejection of Israel pi event the establish- 
ment of the divine kingdom on earth ? Not at all. 
My oxen and fatlings are killed : the wedding feast is 
prepared, and let the servants scour the highways and 
hedges, and compel everybody they meet to come in, 
that my house may be furnished with guests. " Children 
of Abraham, indeed ! " exclaimed, in his indignation, the 
clear-sighted John: "God can make out of the common 
dust, out of these stones on the surface of the wilderness, 
children of Abraham." "The poor have the gospel 
preached to them." The babes see that to which you 
wise and prudent are blind, said Jesus ; and every one is 
blessed that does not take offence at me.' 1 So, instead 
of the Israelitish nation taking the kingdom of heaven, 
and ruling the remnant of the nations forever, the Israel- 
itish nation, by rejecting him, their shepherd and king, 
have filled the measure of their iniquity; and the kingdom 
is given to the poor, to babes, to the children of the king- 
dom, to the righteous, to those who have received Jesus 
and ministered to him, or to the little ones that believe on 
him. ' 

-V scarcely less radical modification of the prophetic 
conception, as kept alive in the popular feeling, is trace- 
able also to the known character of Jesus. The glory 
of the restoration was long life, peace, power over the 

a Matt. iii., 7. b Lake xix., 41, 42, c Matt, iii., 'i. 

•I M.ut. xi., 5, 6. i' Matt, xi., 25. 



j6 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

heathen — the wealth of the nations in gold, silver, and 
raiment poured into Jerusalem. To Jesus, life was noth- 
ing. He held his own ready to lay down for his hope. 
He roused the dull souls of his followers by telling them, 
" He that saveth his life shall lose it : he that loseth his 
life for my sake shall save it." Fear not them that kill 
the body : fear only him who can kill both soul and body 
in hell." 1 ' He cared nothing for wealth. The first words 
of his Sermon on the Mount were a beatitude upon the 
poor. He denied that a rich man could enter his king- 
dom of heaven. He told a young man, whose correct 
morals won his love, that he must give away all his 
possessions to have treasure in heaven. He gloried in 
having no property, not even what the birds and foxes 
had, — a place to lay his head. d Power over other men 
was to him a snare and a reproach : the great man was he 
who was servant of all. 6 Accordingly, Jesus eliminated 
from his doctrine of the kingdom of heaven all the ele- 
ments of secular prosperity, and gave no pictures of its 
wealth and luxury to excite a merely sordid and sensuous 
imagination. Some ideas of recompense for the priva- 
tions they had suffered, some recognition of his perse- 
cuted disciples sitting in judgment on their persecutors, 
evidently lingered in his promise of a hundred-fold more 
houses and lands than they had given up, and of the 
twelve thrones, on which his twelve chief friends should 
sit, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 1 

Terrible in vengeance and fire and blood as was the 
great day, which all the prophets had foreseen in vision, 
not all the enemies of the chosen people were to be de- 
stroyed. The heathen nations were to be ruled over by 
the victorious Israelites, and only those, who had fought 
against Jerusalem and Jehovah, were to be miserably de- 
stroyed. The rest of mankind were to become proselytes, 
and yearly to come up to Mount Zion to perform rites in 
recognition of the world-sovereignty of Jehovah. We 
look in vain in the scheme of Jesus for this mitigation 
and mercy. Though the redeemed, the saved, the blessed 
of his Father were the poor, the little ones, that had be- 
lieved on him, and though to this class no hard test of 

a Luke ix., 24. '> Luke xii., 4, 5. cMatt. xix., 16, 26. d Matt, viii., 19, 20. 

«'Matt. xxiii., 10, 12. f Matt, xix., 27-29. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS JJ 

discipleship was applied, no searching analysis of the 
genuineness of conversion, no metaphysical inspection of 
a grace, the counterfeit of which eludes the careful scru- 
tiny of all but divinely aided experts, — nothing, in fine, but 
giving a cup of water to one, or ministering to the physi- 
cal wants of one, because he is a disciple of Jesus, — yet 
nowhere in all the conversation of Jesus is any purpose 
disclosed to exempt those, who shall disbelieve on him, 
or neglect to minister to him or the humblest of his fol- 
lowers, from complete rejection and perpetual punishment 
and destruction. After the judgment, their submission 
was declared to be too late. a They are not to be ser- 
vants even in the new kingdom. 13 Their doom, like the 
kingdom prepared for the blessed of the Father, is pre- 
pared for them from the foundation of the world. 

The chief feature of the prophetic restoration was the 
re-establishment of the Mosaic worship, the honor of the 
priesthood, and the punctilious observance of the feasts 
and sacrifices of the temple. But, of these, Jesus enter- 
tained a very light estimate. According to his three 
more credible biographers, he never went up to Jerusalem 
to the annual feasts until on the eve of his death, and 
then with quite other views than to be a humble commu- 
nicant. The priesthood he held in such contempt, that 
his animosity toward the order is the one riddle of his 
character ; and of the laws of Moses, even of the ten com- 
mandments, he spoke slightingly, as the traditions of them 
of old times.' 1 Accordingly, there is no glorified Jerusa- 
lem, no temple worship to which all nations come up, 
and no priest nor priestly order, no scribe nor Pharisee in 
his kingdom of heaven. 

It is thus apparent how much the genius of Jesus had 
modified the national anticipation of a glorious epoch, 
which was believed to be foretold by the poet-prophets 
of an earlier age. It is not surprising that the great body 
of well-taught scribes and, following them, the mass of the 
Jewish people, failed to see in Jesus any similitude of their 
hero king and deliverer; rejected his idea of two comings 
of the Messiah, neither of them bringing any restoration 
to Israel as such, or making the worship revealed through 

"Matt, xxv., 10-13. bLukc xiii., 25. c Matt. xxv.. 34, 41. 

(IMatt. v., 2i, 27, 33. 3«, 43- 



/8 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Moses the cultus of the subdued Gentiles ; and would not 
accept, as the salvation promised to their race, what was 
offered on such cheap terms to wayfarers in the highways 
and hedges, and to the Israelite only as he virtually fell 
off from Moses and the Jehovah of their fathers. 

Why did Jesus believe the kingdom of heaven to be at 
hand, and, though he declared he did not know the day 
nor the hour when the Son of Man should come in thj 
clouds to establish it, yet stake his whole veracity upon 
the prediction that that generation should not pass until 
all that he had affirmed in reference to it, should be ful- 
filled ? :l We can discover two reasons which probably 
contributed, with other impressions too private and subtle 
for conjecture even, to this fixed prepossession of his life. 
John the Baptist had preached repentance as a necessary 
preparation for the kingdom of heaven, which he declared 
to be at hand. Those who came to his baptism — and 
they were undoubtedly many, even if we consider Mat- 
thew's statement that Jerusalem and all Judea and all the 
region about Jordan were baptized by him, 1 ' an obvious 
exaggeration — believed his prediction at the time. When 
afterward Herod laid hands on him, kept him in prison at 
his will, and had him murdered without any popular com- 
motion, without any tokens in earth or sky of the displeas- 
ure of heaven, the fickle multitude, ready to be alarmed, 
easy to be reassured, doubted if anything unusual was 
about to happen. Not so Jesus : in his sincere and ear- 
nest soul, that revered John as a prophet, a conviction once 
fastened would abide. He believed in his old master none 
the less loyally after the ruling powers had suppressed 
him, and after his treacherous converts had forsaken him. 

When once he had accepted the belief, that the pro- 
phetic era of a reign of righteousness was on the eve of 
beginning, upon the faith of John's declaration, there 
was much in the character and opinions of Jesus to con- 
firm and intensify that belief. Jesus had lived a blameless 
life. Free from the taint of sensuality and sordidness, he 
had preserved a tender moral feeling, highly sensitive to 
the contact of evil. When he came out of the seclusion, 
in which his youth had passed, in pious meditation and 
devout communion with what was to him the personal 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 79 

presence of the paternal God, and with a marvellous intui- 
tion of character looked upon worldly men, — the corrupt, 
licentious, and extortionate Roman place-holders, courtiers 
and soldiers with their base retinue of male and female 
profligates, the priesthood zealous and punctilious in the 
performance of worship, but formal, undevout, and un- 
charitable, if not extortionate, oppressive, and vicious, — 
when he came to learn, that everywhere reputable and 
honorable men gave themselves shamelessly to the prac- 
tice of acts which he had found it easy to exclude from his 
thought, it is not surprising that he came to believe that 
humanity had sunk to its dregs, that the last stages of 
wickedness had been reached, and that the sin-drunken 
world was staggering to its doom. Thus ever does the 
observation of life in its excesses of evil sadden and shock 
that rare feminine type of purity to which he belonged ; 
while the experience of years, travel, and especially famil- 
iarity with the history and literature of other ages corrects 
our despair of our own age, and either makes us cynical in 
the familiarity with conditions which seem to affect society 
nearly alike everywhere, or philosophical in the confidence 
that, in the midst of outcropping crime that ruins individ- 
uals, humanity, by slow accretions, is gaining in virtue and 
moral sanity. Had Jesus visited Alexandria, Athens, 
Rome, had he known by familiarity with the history and 
literature of earlier times the refinements and debase- 
ments of iniquity, that had distinguished the luxurious 
capitals Babylon, Nineveh, and Memphis, he might have 
believed that the industrious, frugal, and devout people 
of his own provincial Galilee were not the wicked and 
adulterous generation " of whose evil ways the heavens 
had grown weary. 

It is, perhaps, generally believed in the Christian 
Church, now that nearly nineteen centuries have inter- 
vened without any coming of Jesus in the clouds of 
heaven with a retinue of angels to gather his chosen into 
an everlasting kingdom, and to consign all other men to 
an everlasting punishment, that Jesus did not mean by 
the words he uttered with so much emphasis of assevera- 
tion to indicate any outward and physical changes in the 
constitution of nature or the order of human society. It 



SO OPINION'S AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

is held that the kingdom of heaven is a highly figurative 
expression, and denotes not so much a catastrophe or new 
order of civilization, as the introduction into the old order 
of a new and spiritual force, whereby the world is, 
through long and gradual processes, to be renovated and 
made the fit abode of regenerated and purified men. 
Such passages as these are cited in support of this view : 
When he was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom 
of God should come, he answered, "The kingdom of God 
cometh not with observation : neither shall they say, 
Lo here ! or Lo there ! for, behold, the kingdom of God is 
within you." a The parable of the mustard-seed and that of 
the leaven are also believed to typify the gradual and quiet 
evolution of the kingdom of heaven. The conversation 
of which the first declaration forms a part, according to 
Matthew, was not held with the Pharisees, but with his 
own disciples. b A detailed account of the method and 
time of the end of the age given to his disciples by Jesus 
in answer to their specific question, is broken into two 
narratives by Luke, and part told to his disciples and part 
to the Pharisees in answer to their demand when the 
kingdom of God should come. The probabilities seem 
to favor Matthew's correctness. The Pharisees are not 
shown ever to have reached a stage of docility and confi- 
dence, to make it probable that they would ever ask such 
a question. His determination to exclude from a knowl- 
edge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven all to 
whom it had not been given to know them, would prevent 
Jesus from making such disclosures to the Pharisees. If 
he used such language to any questioner, it must b. 
reconciled with what he said before and afterward. 
Luke declares that he went on to say : As the lightning 
shineth from one part of the heaven to the other, so shall 
the Son of Man be in his day. Every eye shall see him. 
But still the kingdom cometh not with observation, or, 
as it has been better translated, with outward show of its 
coming. This translation accords with what he emphati- 
cally insisted upon. Even I do not know the day or the 
hour. There is no premonition that I can give. It 
comes like lightning from the sky, like a thief in the 
night : the only safety is to be always watching and ex- 

a Luke xvii., 20-37. •'Matt, xxiv., 3-5. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 8 1 

peering it. Only Luke reports that he said the kingdom 
of God is within y on. Another translation gives among 
yon, and this makes the statement harmonize with what 
Jesus said on another occasion : " Behold, a greater than 
Solomon is here " ; a and on still another occasion to the 
Pharisees : " If I cast out devils by the spirit of God, 
then the kingdom of God is come unto you." '' Even if 
he said to the Pharisees, The kingdom of God is within 
you, it might well have been with the significance, Until 
you are changed within, for you no kingdom of God is 
possible. If it was said to his disciples, it might have 
been to rebuke their interest in mere outward splendors, 
and in the glory and authority they would have under the 
new order, and to insist, as he always did, that the right 
heart, the devoted faith, were the essential condition of 
their salvation, without wishing to disaffirm what he had 
promised them of honor and dominion in his kingdom. 

The growth of the mustard-seed and the leavening of 
the meal were both quite rapid processes, and might well 
express the progress which his new religion had made 
and was to make under the preaching of his apostles, 
from the time they were appointed, until their Lord 
should come to bring them their reward and make them 
ruler of his household. 

Finding a belief in the speedy occurrence of a great 
catastrophe, that would involve the world in its social 
order and in its physical constitution, common among the 
first believers in Christianity, the hypothesis is possible 
that they, in attempting to report the conversations of 
their master, injected into them their own prepossessions. 
He himself might have been a man of such transcendent 
genius, and his philosophy, so much beyond their com- 
prehension, might have been so purposely veiled in the 
enigmatic form of his usual teaching, that his disciples 
ignorantly mistook a scheme of a gradual amelioration of 
mankind in personal character and social conditions, under 
a physical order of things substantially like what it had 
been from the beginning, for a violent crisis, judgment, 
and segregation of mankind into good and evil, and a 
sudden and complete and lasting destruction of the latter 
class in a general overthrow and reconstruction of the 

"Luke xi., 31. bMatt. xii., 28. 



82 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

visible universe. Such a method of reasoning, however, 
utterly defeats every sincere effort to discover a proper 
historical basis for the character and for the existence of 
Jesus. If we may believe that all that the New Testa- 
ment narratives impute to Jesus, as his doctrine of the 
kingdom of heaven, was never said by him, or was said 
in a sense entirely different both from the obvious import 
of the language and from the significance of it in the 
minds of those who heard it, then we may with equal 
reason believe that his teachings of non-resistance, of the 
blessing of poverty, were all misapprehensions of his apos- 
tles, and that he himself was hot-tempered, hasty to 
avenge injuries, avaricious, and subservient to the rich. 
Nay, we may hold that all his intellectual and moral traits 
were the creation of his biographers, and that he himself 
was dull, commonplace, envious, and ignoble. 

Immediately after the death of Jesus, a body of men 
and women go out from Jerusalem, and in a few years 
penetrate into nearly every region of the then civilized 
world, proclaiming that the world is about to come to an 
end. They accompany this message with expressions of 
devotion and subjection to Jesus, to whom they award an 
authority and character substantially divine; and they say 
that they make this declaration mainly on the faith of 
what he had told them in his lifetime. They differed 
about many most fundamental things, such as the validity 
of the Mosaic law and revelation, and as to whether good 
conduct or faith alone was the essential agency in effect- 
ing salvation. But that the day of the Lord, the day of 
judgment, the coming of the Son of Man with his angels, 
the separation of the saints from the wicked, was at hand, 
all sects and schools of the early believers seem to have 
taken for granted. 

Paul had written to the converts at Rome, describing 
the sinner as treasuring up wrath against the day of 
wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, 
who will render to every man according to his deeds, in 
the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus 
Christ, according to the gospel which Paul had preached. ■ 
He had comforted them with the assurance that, having 
suffered with Jesus, they should be glorified with him, 

;> Romans ii., 6, 16. 






THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 83 

and had described their earnest expectation of the mani- 
festation of the sons of God and of the redemption of 
their bodies/ He had, in allusion to what Jesus had so 
earnestly urged, that they should watch all night for his 
coming, that might be at midnight and might be at cock- 
crowing, apprised them, that it was high time to awake 
out of sleep, the night was far spent, the day was at 
hand, and their salvation was nearer than when they 
believed. 1 ' 

To his Corinthian converts, he had written as those 
waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who 
should strengthen them, to the end that they might be 
blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. He told 
them not to judge him in reference to conduct he 
deemed it unnecessary to explain, in fine to judge nothing 
before the time, until the Lord came, who should bring- 
to light the counsels of all hearts.' 1 He used the phrase, 
"the day of the Lord Jesus Christ" as if its import as 
the day of his final coming was already familiar, as it 
doubtless was in the minds of all believers, from the fre- 
quency with which its approach had been impressed upon 
their minds. He warned them that the time was short : 
married or not married, in affliction, in pleasure, possessing 
this world's goods or not, it mattered not ; the fashion of 
this world passeth away/ All the relations and interests 
of a state so transitory were of trivial account. The 
ends of the world, he said, had come upon him and his 
contemporaries/ By the communion of the bread and 
wine, he told them they showed forth the Lord's death 
"till he come."- In a fuller detail of his views of the 
resurrection, he explained that Christ was the first fruitage 
or product of the resurrection, and that after him all that 
were his at his coming would rise, and then the end 
should be, when death should be destroyed, and Jesus, 
having put down all rule, authority, and power, and all 
enemies under his feet, should deliver up the kingdom to 
God. This consummation was in his view so near that 
he spake of himself, though now verging upon old age, 
and of his Corinthian correspondents, as likely to be alive 
at the time, and to be changed without dying into the 

•Romans viii., 17, 19, 23. b Roman! xiii., 11,12. B I« Cor. i., 7, v 

*I. Cor. iv., 5. "I. Cor. vu., 28-31. 'I. Cor. x., 11. %\. Cor. »., 26. 



S4 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

immortal and incorruptible form." Indeed, though Paul, 
writing from his prison in Rome, sometimes anticipated 
his own death, as well he might under such a cruel and 
capricious tyranny as that of Nero, yet he as often spoke 
of living to the general resurrection and of going up from 
active life to meet the Lord in the air. 

He exhorted the Philippians to be sincere and without 
offence till the day of Jesus Christ : h he said he should 
rejoice over them as fruits of his no vain labor z'/,? that day." 
Our conversation, he writes, is in heaven, whence we look 
for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change 
our vile body, and fashion it like his glorious body, d — 
which is another anticipation of the coming of the Lord 
before his body shall have wasted in the grave. Finally, 
he urged them to be moderate, to care for nothing, be- 
cause, he assured them, that "the Lord was at hand." e 

He begged the converts at Colosse to be thankful that, 
they had been deemed worthy to be partakers of the in- 
heritance of the saints in light, and avowed that he was 
the minister to them of a mystery hid for ages, but then 
revealed by him, which was the hope of glory in Christ/ 
and charged them to be faithful and hearty in their ser- 
vice of the Lord, as they expected to receive of him the 
reward of the inheritance.^' 

Writing to the church at Thessalonica, he commended 
them for turning from idols to the true and living God, 
and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from 
the dead, even Jesus who delivered us from the wrath 
to come. 11 "What," he asks, "is our hope, or joy, or 
crown of rejoicing? Ye are in the presence of our 
Lord Jesus Christ at his coming."' He told them not to 
be in hopeless sorrow for those of their members, who 
had died ; for he assured them on the word of Jesus him- 
self that, when he should descend from heaven with a 
shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of 
God, the believers who had died should rise, and then 
that himself and the living disciples would be caught up 
with the raised saints to the clouds to meet the Lord in 
the air, and ever afterward be with him. j As to the time 

» I. Cor. xv., 24, 51, 52. b Phil, i., 6, 10. c Phil, ii., 16. d Phil, iii., 20, 21. 

ePhil. iv., ■;• f Col. i., 12, 27. g Col. iii., 24. h I. Thess. i., 9, 10. 

I I. Thess. ii.. 19. II. Thess. iv., 14-17- 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 85 

when this stupendous event would take place, he reminded 
them that they knew perfectly " the day of the Lord cometli 
as a thief in the night,"* words of Jesus well known to 
the whole Christian community. It would come suddenly, 
and the destruction of the wicked outside world could not 
be avoided : wherefore he charged them, just as Jesus had 
charged his disciples, to be sober and watch. He closed 
his letter with a devout prayer that their whole spirit and 
soul and body (evidently expecting that the body in which 
they lived on earth would survive to partake of the trans- 
formation) be preserved blameless, until the coming of 
the Lord Jesus Christ. b In a second letter to the same 
church, he comforts them under persecutions with the 
assurance of rest with him, when the Lord Jesus shall be 
revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming 
fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and 
that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who 
shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the 
presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power, 
when he shall come to be glorified in his saints and to be 
admired by all that believe. Aware that they might have 
been troubled by his first letter with the apprehension 
that the coming of the Lord might be momentarily ex- 
pected — and such indeed was its import, and his own im- 
pression when writing it — he tells them that there is to 
be a falling away first, a man of sin, a son of perdition to 
come. c There had been an apostasy among the believers. 
Things looked less prosperous in the young church. 
False teachers had come in. It was the custom of the 
zealous apostles to deal in no mild terms with men, who 
viewed the Christian scheme or the Christian history dif- 
ferently from themselves ; and the terms anti-Christ, son 
of perdition, man of sin, were the vigorous epithets, which 
they applied to these heretics. Jesus, in his details of the 
process of the kingdom of heaven, had told his disciples 
there should be false Christs, false prophets, doing great 
signs and wonders, almost deceiving the very elect.' 1 Sev- 
eral of the apostles seemed to have shared with Paul the 
expectation of this time of trial. But he evidently ex- 
pected that this interval would be short, for the mystery 
of iniquity, he said, doth already work ; and he who hin- 

I Thess. v., 1-3. I' I. Thess. v., 23. oil. Tlicss., ii. -l Malt, wdv., 23, 24- 



S6 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

dereth the coming of the man of sin will be taken out of 
the way, when the man of sin will be revealed, whom the 
Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and with 
the brightness of his coming. 

Writing to his own disciple, Timothy, he exhorted him 
to abstain from covetousness and to follow after right- 
eousness, and to keep that commandment without spot or 
rebuke until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
which in his time the King of kings would show." In a 
second letter, he probably quotes words of Jesus as then 
reported, when he says, " If we be dead, we shall live ; if 
we suffer, we shall reign ; if we deny him, he will deny 
us." 1 ' He exults in the near prospect of the crown of 
righteousness which the Lord shall give to him in that 
day, and to all that love his appearing ; and he declares 
that, when Jesus appears in his kingdom, he will judge 
the living and the dead. To Titus, he declares that his 
looking for the glorious appearance of the great God and 
of our Saviour Jesus Christ is his blessed hope. 

Paul seems to have maintained with much pertinacity 
and eloquence a peculiar theory of the resurrection. To 
Paul, the resurrection was a power or process achieved 
wholly by Jesus through his death. By descending into 
the world of the dead, he had overcome Death and won 
from him the power of eternal life, first for himself, after- 
ward for his elect. Hence, Paul everywhere declares 
his gospel a gospel of life and immortality brought to the 
world by his master, Jesus. That Jesus had overcome 
death was proved by his own resurrection. So completely 
did Paul stake the whole scheme of faith and salvation 
upon the actual physical resurrection of Jesus that he 
declares, if Christ be not risen, there is no resurrection 
and faith is vain.' 1 These views he asserted against nomi- 
nal disciples, some of whom affirmed that there was no 
resurrection of the dead, and some that the resurrection 
was already past. Christ's rising, Paul asseverated, was 
the cause of all resurrection. In Adam all die. Only in 
Christ are all made alive." This may be called peculiar, 
because as a Pharisee Paul should have believed with his 
sect in spirits, and in the spiritual existence of the right- 

"I. Tim. vi , i), 15. I>II. Tim. ii., 11, 12. II. Tim. lv., 1, 8. 

d I. Cor. xv., 12, 13, 17. e I. Cor. xv., 22. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS Sj 

eous dead ; and because, upon the Pauline hypothesis, the 
argument by which Jesus sought to prove to the Saddu- 
cees the continued life after death of Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob, had no basis whatever." According to Paul, Abra- 
ham, Isaac, and Jacob, had, like the good dead of his own 
age, slept with Jesus, and were to be brought with him 
into his kingdom, made alive after his resurrection. 

The hand of Paul or some of his school is plainly seen 
in a gloss given to Matthew's account of the phenomenon 
of the bodies of many of the saints rising under the 
general shock which the earth felt at the instant of the 
death of Jesus on the cross. How could Jesus' resurrec- 
tion be the cause of the resurrection of dead men ? How 
could he be the first product of the resurrection, if certain 
buried saints actually rose from their graves on the Fri- 
day afternoon preceding the Sunday morning when Jesus 
rose ? It would have been discreet, like Mark and Luke, 
to have omitted the legend. But it was too clear to the 
wondering converts. So it appears, with the clumsy addi- 
tion, " Many bodies of saints which slept arose, and came 
out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the 
holy city, and appeared unto many." 1 ' Alas poor ghosts! 
Their graves were opened and they rose, but decorously 
waited upon the etiquette of precedence, two days, to 
come out of their graves and appear to their friends in 
the holy city. 

The Epistle to the Hebrews, which purports to be 
written by Paul, but which careful scholars have found 
reason to impute to some other of the earlier disciples, 
speaks of Jesus' crucifixion, as having taken place in the 
end of the world, — that is, in the world's last days, — and 
declares that, to those that look for him, he will appear the 
second time without sin unto salvation. It describes the 
then status of Jesus himself, crucified and believed to 
have passed into the heavens, as seated at the right hand 
of God, and expecting continuously till his enemies be 
made his footstool, 11 or, in the very condition in which 
Jehovah is supposed in the Psalm to have addressed him, 
of waiting for the catastrophe, which was to bring his 
enemies under his power. It advises the Hebrew con- 
verts to exhort each other to good works, and so much 

"Luke xx., 37. i'Matt. xxvii., 52, 53. c Heb. ix., 26, 28. <1 Heb. x., 12, 13. 



88 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

the more as they see the day approaching," evidently 
considering that even unenlightened persons c6uld dis- 
cern in passing events signs of the coming on of the end. 
It begged them to hold fast their confidence and to be 
patient, that after doing God's will they might receive 
the promise, " for yet a little while, and he that shall 
come will come, and will not tarry." 1 ' Before this re- 
markable Epistle ends, it gives with great precision an 
embodiment of the conception which the believers of the 
first century derived from the prophecies, particularly 
those of Zechariah as modified by the explanations of 
Jesus and his apostles. In the vividness of the descrip- 
tion, the day so near is considered already come, and it 
is affirmed: "Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto 
the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and 
to an innumerable company of angels, to the general 
assembly and church of the first born, which are written 
in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits 
of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of 
the new covenant." When Jehovah spake to your 
fathers from Sinai, his voice shook the earth. When 
he speaks from Mount Zion, it shall not only shake, 
but overthrow the earth ; and only the uncreated things, 
that cannot be shaken, shall remain. Wherefore, receiv- 
ing a kingdom which cannot be moved, they were to 
serve God with reverence and fear, who was to be a 
consuming fire to all who served him not. 

Thus far have been traced the opinions which Paul held 
in reference to the second coming of Jesus and the end of 
the world, and which the Pauline adherents of Christian- 
ity in Asia and Europe must have received on the faith 
of his writings. Let us now see whether substantially 
the same opinions were entertained by those propagan- 
dists of the new religion, whose head-quarters were at 
Jerusalem, and who looked at Paul with suspicion and 
seriously, and with some bitterness, controverted the dog- 
mas, which he taught with such confidence of conviction. 

James, who was Jesus' brother, in the only Epistle pre- 
served of his, urges the converts among the twelve tribes 
to be patient unto the coming of the Lord, to be patient 
as the husbandman who waiteth for the coming up of his 

*Heb. x., 25. b Heb. x., 37. c Heb. xii., 22-29. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 89 

planted seed, "for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh " ; 
to have no controversies nor unkind feelings against 
brethren, for behold the judge standeth at the door/ 
evidently having in his memory the words of his brother : 
" Be ye like men that wait for their Lord, . . . that, when 
he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him im- 
mediately." 1 ' 

Peter, the confidant of Jesus, in a letter to the converts 
among the heathen in Asia Minor, affirms that he and 
they are begotten unto a lively hope to an incorruptible 
inheritance in heaven, reserved for them, in the anticipa- 
tion of which they rejoiced through present trials, and 
that their faith would redound to their glory at the 
appearing of Jesus Christ. This salvation for which they 
hoped, he declared, the prophets had predicted, and the 
very angels had interested themselves in; but they must 
hope for it with soberness till the revelation of Jesus 
Christ. d He declares that Jesus is then ready to judge 
the living and the dead, and that the dead have had 
the gospel preached to them, that they may be judged 
by the same standard as men then living. Peter evi- 
dently did not share Paul's peculiar views about the res- 
urrection. To him, as to his countrymen generally, in- 
cluding Jesus, the patriarchs and kings and prophets 
and people of Israel were alive in the underworld, were 
spirits in prison, to whom it would be just to carry the 
intelligence of the coming of the kingdom of heaven, 
which all that were worthy would accept and rejoice 
in. The end of all things is at hand, he asserts : be 
therefore sober and watch. He says, however, a fiery 
trial is to try them : the falling away is to come, the 
false Christs : all but the elect will be deceived, but 
they will only be partaking of Christ's sufferings, and, 
when his glory shall be revealed, their joy shall be ex- 
ceeding. The time has come when judgment must begin 
at the house of God ; and, if the righteous are barely 
saved, what must be the fate of the sinner? He calls 
his converts the flock of God, and assures them that, 
when the chief Shepherd appears, they shall receive an 
unfading crown of glory/ 

aJamesv.,7-9. b Luke xii., 36. 1. Peter i., 4, 5» 7- 

«il. Peter ii., i2, 13, 17, 20. el. Peter iv., 5,6. ' L Peter iv., 5, 7. «*. '3. »7-»9- 



90 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

In a second letter, the authenticity of which, however, 
is questioned among Biblical critics, Peter maintains that 
he was not following cunningly devised fables, when he 
made known the power and coming of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, that he himself heard a voice declaring Jesus the 
beloved Son of God ; and that they have in the Scriptures 
spoken by holy men, moved by the Holy Ghost, even a 
surer word of prophecy than that attestation of his." The 
frequent disappointment of the expectation of the Church, 
strained to utmost tension by these notes of warning 
everywhere sounded by the preachers of the new religion, 
had begotten its natural fruit. Scoffers and sceptics had 
come, saying : Men live and die, and the world goes 
quietly on as it was wont from the first ; and where is 
this promise of his coming? Ah ! just so quietly went on 
the old antediluvian world, sleeping between the great 
surrounding oceans with no premonition of change, till it 
perished suddenly in the engulfing water. By the same 
token, he says, these heavens and this earth are kept in 
store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and 
perdition of ungodly men. The day of the Lord will 
come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens shall 
pass away with a great noise, and the earth and its works 
shall be burned up. Expecting that catastrophe, he 
exhorts them to holy conversation and godliness, and 
declares that he and the disciples of Jesus (on his prom- 
ise) look for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein 
righteousness shall dwell. 1. 

The Epistles of John betray a common authorship with 
the evangel standing in his name. By whomsoever they 
were written, they indicate how extensive was the expec- 
tation of the immediate return of Jesus from heaven ; and, 
if they were not written till the second century, they indi- 
cate how tenaciously that expectation was cherished by 
believers, after all the events to attend that return had 
long happened or become impossible. " Little children," 
the Christian father writes, "it is the last time ; and, as 
ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now 
are there many antichrists, whereby we know that it is 
the last time." c "Abide in him, that, when he shall 
appear, we may not be ashamed before him at his 

all. Peter i., ii, 16, 19. Ml. Peter iii. c I. John ii., 18. 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 91 

coming." a "It doth not yet appear what we shall be; 
but, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we 
shall see him as he is." b 

Scholars have agreed that the Revelation, so called, is 
a genuine and early product of the literary spirit that 
kindled with the first Christian reformation. Like the 
twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of Matthew, it is 
an elaborate exposition of the kingdom of heaven. But it 
is not, like those chapters, by a master hand ; and, in place 
of the severe simplicity and solemn dignity of the concep- 
tions of Jesus, we have much trivial detail, many extrava- 
gances, that are more grotesque than awful, redeemed, 
however, in the last few chapters, by soothing and pa- 
thetic descriptions of the rest and consolations of the 
righteous, that have always deeply affected the human 
heart. There is less creative power in this curious prose 
poem than at first seems apparent. A fervid convert, 
susceptible to the sublime imagery of the Hebrew proph- 
ets, thoroughly imbued with those terrific and exul- 
tant expectations of convulsions, falling heavens, deluges 
of fire, slaughter and torture of unbelievers, which the 
early Christians must have recounted in their assemblies 
to each other with blanched cheeks and glowing eyes, 
might have woven together in his sleeping and waking 
visions just such fancies. The seven golden candlesticks 
were borrowed from Zechariah, the description of the 
Son of Man was taken from Daniel, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. 
The description of the throne, of the book, of the four 
beasts, of the slain lamb, of the four horses, are all repro- 
ductions of the symbolisms of the same prophets. The 
beast with seven heads and ten horns had appeared be- 
fore in the visions of Daniel ; Isaiah had told of the down- 
fall of Babylon ; and Ezekiel had given the topography 
and measurements of the holy city. In fine, this com- 
position of a man of inferior genius takes, imperfectly 
remembered and understood, the ideas of Jesus, of a 
kingdom of heaven, that involved the destruction of the 
world, the punishment of the wicked, and the gathering 
into renovated Jerusalem of the saints, collated with the 
poetic exaggerations of the prophets, and sets them forth 
as verities of the future. The fact that it was written, 

■ I. Join, ii.,28. hi. John iii., 2. 



92 OPINIONS VXD CHARACTER OF JESUS 

was read and cherished and wondered at, shows how 
deeply the idea of the end of the world possessed the 
early Christian mind. 

It purports to be a revelation made through John from 
Jesus Christ of things which must shortly come to pass. 
"Behold," he says, "he cometh with clouds; and every 
eye shall see him : and they which pierced him : and all kin- 
dreds of the earth shall wail because of him." He sends 
messages to several churches, and announces that he is 
coming like a thief in the night, and they must watch. 
Him that overcometh he will acknowledge before God 
and the angels, and clothe in white raiment, will write on 
him the name of the holy city and his own new name, 
and make to sit down with him on the throne of his king- 
dom. Then follow details of the plagues of the earth, 
the destruction of its inhabitants, the stars falling, the 
sky rolled together like a scroll, the islands and moun- 
tains displaced, the selection of the saved, — a specified 
number from each of the tribes of Israel, an unnumbered 
multitude from other nations, who had been persecuted 
for Jesus' sake, — the opening of the bottomless pit and the 
woes that issued from it; the wicked earth, although the 
heavens have been rolled up and the stars are fallen, still 
keeping up the warfare against the heavenly powers, and 
suffering fearful slaughter and torture. At last, the 
Lamb appears on Mount Zion ; and, after the contest 
between him and the kings of the earth, in which they 
are aided by the beast with seven heads and ten horns 
and by the old serpent or dragon, and by the woman city 
Babylon, Satan is imprisoned, and the souls of the mar- 
tyrs who had been faithful to Jesus live with him on earth 
a thousand years. After this, all the dead are raised, and 
all who are not inscribed in the book of life are consigned 
with the dead to a lake of fire. The new Jerusalem comes 
down from a new heaven to a new earth, where God shall 
reign with his saints in a world where there shall be no 
more death, sorrow, crying, or pain. It is difficult among 
the incoherences and grotesque horrors of this composi- 
tion to find even this consecutive order of events ; for 
details, often trivially minute and unimportant and utterly 
irreconcilable with any chastened imagination, are given 
in chapters, that are evidently recapitulations of what had 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 93 

been told before. The pictures are like those which 
harass a sickly sleep, when no person or thing retains 
its identity, and a locust becomes a horse with the head 
of a man and having his chief power in his tail. The 
two resurrections with an interval of a thousand years 
are an idea for which the prophetic descriptions, the 
delineations of Jesus, and the traditions of the apostles 
furnish no authority. So marked a distinction, even 
among the elect, might well have fired the heart of 
the persecuted Christians to bear with patience and wel- 
come with exultation the martyrdom, which was to be 
so indemnified and honored in the kingdom of heaven. 
After the coming of the Lord, and after his victory over 
the rebellious race of man had become so complete as to 
have Satan bound and cast into the bottomless pit, he is 
again let loose to deceive and seduce the world to their 
final terrible doom ; but this gratuitous improvidence on 
the part of the heavenly powers is not reconcilable with 
any scheme of eschatology hinted by Jesus, his disciples, 
or their forerunners, the prophets. 

The controversial force of such a work in a supersti- 
tious age must have been considerable. The idol wor- 
shippers, pleasure-seekers, mere busy, worldly men, the 
pagan philosophers, the obstinate adherents of the old 
religion as well, as the heretical teachers of the new, are 
denounced, punished with plagues, and finally consigned 
to the lake of fire and brimstone, it being implied that 
they are the great majority of the human race, with an 
absence of all commiseration and of all feeling except 
exultation, that shows that the author was very little 
touched with the better spirit of the humane character of 
Jesus. Slight honor is it to Jesus to make him the con- 
spicuous champion and contriver of the cruel tortures for 
mankind, which are only not harrowing to read, because 
by their coarse grotesqueness they excite the ludicrous 
side of human sensibility. It must be said, however, that 
the hell of the Apocalypse, the hell of Paul and of Jesus, 
and the catastrophe that befalls the Gentiles in this pro- 
phetic forecasting of the coming of the Messiah, merci- 
less and indiscriminating as they are, will not compare in 
unthinkable horrors with the physical hell of Dante, of 
Milton, and of Robert Pollok, nor with the hopeless, 



94 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

never-ending mental agony, which is accepted as the 
fixed fate of a large portion of mankind by refined and 
educated modern evangelicism. 

According to Jesus, the righteous only were to be re- 
ceived into eternal life, while the wicked were to go away 
into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 
but this language carries with it the implication that the 
fire is to be effectual to their everlasting destruction. 
Paul declares that those who obey not the gospel shall 
be punished with an everlasting destruction, which fairly 
implies, that from that destruction there shall be no rema- 
nent life or resurrection. So in the fire-pictures of the 
writer of Revelation, only Satan, the beast, and the false 
prophet are to be tormented day and night, forever and 
ever ; while the mass of men, whom they had deceived, 
were to be cast into the lake of fire, and there experience 
a second death. It accorded doubtless with such an idea 
of a complete and just retribution, as even a Jew in the 
first century might entertain, that only the ringleaders 
in a rebellion against the new sovereign of earth and 
heaven should be tortured forever, — perhaps because 
they were endowed with a nature not capable of death, — 
but that the great crowd of their mortal, defeated fol- 
lowers should be summarily destroyed by fire, an agency 
intimately connected with the coming of the Lord in all 
the Old and New Testament prophecies. 

It has thus been seen, by a careful examination of the 
authentic Christian records, how deep and paramount and 
universal was the conviction in the minds of the witnesses 
and confidential friends of Jesus, who became for the 
world and the Church the media of communicating the 
traditions of his life and doctrine, that the kingdom of 
heaven, drawing after it, in a series of supernatural and 
stupendous events, the end of the order of the world, the 
overthrow of all secular governments and societies, the 
destruction of the opponents of the gospel, and the estab- 
lishment of an everlasting kingdom of the saints, rein- 
forced by the resurrection of the good among the dead, 
was so near its fulfilment, that the great duty of every 
man was to watch in prayer and soberness for its sudden 
appearance. While so many passages are found in the 
writings of all the apostles and New Testament contribu- 



THE DOMINANT IDEA OF JESUS 95 

tors directly affirming this conviction, it is the underlying 
sanction of all their exhortations to virtuous conduct, the 
secret fire, at which all their zeal for the new doctrine was 
lighted, the solution of the otherwise incomprehensible 
patience and exultation, with which they encountered per- 
secutions, beatings, imprisonments, and cruel deaths. 

As Jesus had discouraged all industry, all forethought 
to make provision for the wants of the body, refused with 
disdain to interest himself in disputed rights of property, 
spoken disparagingly of the ties of family relationship, 
and challenged those, who would be greatly honored in 
the kingdom of heaven, to arrest, so far as they could, the 
generation of the human race ; so Paul thought, in the 
narrow margin of time that was left, it was entirely inex- 
pedient for the unmarried to marry or for the married to 
be divorced. Had Paul been assured that the world was to 
go quietly on, as it had from the beginning of history, for 
two thousand years, that wars were to continue, kingdoms, 
dynasties, and republics to rise and fall, intelligence, virtue, 
and civilization to ebb and flow over different regions and 
among the different races of the world, that nations that 
had never accepted or had apostatized from Christianity, 
and men that disowned it, would live as virtuously and as 
prosperously, and contribute as much to the civilization of 
the world, as the nations and men that were true to his 
traditions of Christianity, he might have exclaimed with 
his accustomed impetuosity, " Then is my preaching vain 
and your faith vain." 

The historical fact, that the early Christians expected 
the end of the world in their lifetime, few intelligent per- 
sons will deny. But it will be denied that this expecta- 
tion had a justification in the teachings of Jesus, rightly 
understood, or that it stands now in any prominent view 
in a comprehensive summary of the doctrines and opin- 
ions of the New Testament. It will be said, that it was an 
unimportant misapprehension of those who undertook to 
report the words of Jesus, in no wise compromising his 
omniscience or divinity ; that it was, even if they accepted 
it, a mere blemish of their human intelligence, which did 
not incapacitate them from being instruments of a divine 
revelation to the world of the truths of the gospel, which 
are in no wise complicated with this misapprehension. 



0/6 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Does it not rather seem that this expectation of the end 
of the world was derived by the first believers from what 
Jesus had himself taught ? He had not taught it casually 
or incidentally. It was his kingdom of heaven, to pro- 
claim which he believed himself appointed ; it was his 
dominant idea, to which every thing else in his mind and 
in his teaching was made subordinate. To accept Jesus 
as a revelator of the will of God, as the introducer of a 
new order into the world, and then to reject his revela- 
tion ; to deny the new order to have come or that it is 
ever to come, what is this but to be disobedient to his 
gospel, and to incur the fate which Paul declared awaited 
that class ? A historical theory is possible and has been 
accepted that accepts Jesus, but denies his doctrine of a 
kingdom of heaven. A like daring of sceptical criticism 
acknowledging the existence of Christopher Columbus 
might insist that he was a professor at Salamanca, who 
had such a horror of the water that he could never be 
induced to set his foot in a vessel or a boat ; or yielding 
to the force of the evidence that there was a German, 
who lived in the sixteenth century named Martin Luther, 
might maintain, that all that is said about his controversy 
with the Papacy is a fiction, he having been all his life a 
devout Jesuit and advocate of Papal infallibility -md 
supremacy. 



CHAPTER IV. 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS. 

"To me, it is much more animating and encouraging to see that, in nat- 
ural course and by ordinary operation of universal faculties, prophets and 
saviors arise, and will doubtless continue to arise, than to believe that, by a 
special intervention, one Redeemer was once sent whose influence has cer- 
tainly thus far not been adequate to so singular an occasion and office." — 
Harriet MartineatCs Eastern Journal. 

The social relations of men, the rights and duties 
which the marital, family, tribal, and national ties imply, 
and the instincts, affections, sentiments, and principles 
which they develop and inspire, have very largely con- 
tributed to the culture and growth of the human mind, 
and to the progressive evolution of civilization. Accord- 
ingly, the laws of the social relations, the principles, 
which underlie the structure of communities, cities, and 
states, and by conformity to which, public order, the 
ascendency of justice, the protection of the weak, the 
security to the greatest number possible of the substan- 
tial and prime goods of life, can be preserved, have 
always deeply engaged the thoughts of the most liberal 
and highly endowed men. 

The political notions of Jesus have already been indi- 
cated in his dominant prepossession of an immediately 
impending kingdom of heaven. His scheme of a perfect 
social order was summary and comprehensive. It was to 
tear down the effete, decayed world, the rejected Jerusa- 
lem, and to receive from heaven a new Jerusalem, a city 
having foundations, whose builder and maker is God. 

Government is the application of political economy, the 
law of the house or of the social order to the struggle for 
life, whereby the strong, while taking, in the right of their 
strength, a superior share of the goods of life, shall not 
deprive the weak of their smaller share. Jesus not only 
rebuked the greed and violence of the strong, but he 



98 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

sought to repress the very struggle for life itself. He 
said: Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, 
what ye shall drink, with what ye shall be clothed. Live 
like the birds, which the heavenly Father feeds; enjoy 
your life like the lilies, careless of what may befall them ; 
leave the care for property to the Gentiles, the world's 
people, who have always troubled themselves about such 
things, and seek only the kingdom of heaven, in which 
the supply of the bodily wants is the minimum of the 
divine foresight' 

Of what use is political economy in such a faith ? Why 
should law be invoked to make men contend fairly with 
each other for food, drink, and clothing, and all the for- 
tune that is an equivalent for them? "Who made me," 
he asked impatiently, "a judge or a divider over you ?" b 
If thy brother has cheated thee out of thy share of a 
paternal inheritance, do not appeal to the law : only the 
Gentile, the law-loving Roman, the modern Englishman, 
whose highest idea is fair play, care for justice. Give 
him an acquittance of the whole inheritance. Has a 
thief entered thy hall and taken thy Sunday overcoat ? 
Seek him out, — not to hand him over to the police, but to 
bestow upon him thy blessing and thy cloak. Not only 
resist no evil, but seek no indemnity for it afterward. If 
thou art knocked down by the blow of a ruffian, if it was 
upon the right cheek, offer to his not yet appeased wrath 
the left cheek also. And wealth, — useless in itself in 
the approaching destruction of all things, — what does it 
represent but the lawless striving and worldly thrift that 
went into the getting of it ? It is as impossible, with such 
a burden, to enter into the kingdom of heaven, as for a 
camel to enter the eye of a needle. Sell all that thou 
hast and give it to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure 
in heaven. d 

When it is considered that human society, like the com- 
plicated communism of ants, bees, and beavers, and the 
looser aggregation of all the higher animals, so far as it 
has not been superseded by the care or broken up by the 
hostility of man, has for its prime object the procure- 
ment of subsistence and the common defence against 

» Matt vi., 34-34. M.iikexii , 13, 14. c Matt, v., 3*-.^. 

<1 Luke xii., 33 ; Mark x., 21, 25. 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 99 

attack from without, it will be seen, how revolutionary is a 
political scheme, that makes it a prime principle not to 
seek subsistence and not to resist attacks. When it is 
remembered, that out of society have grown all the senti- 
ments and affections of men that are developed beyond 
beastly instincts, out of resistance to evil have proceeded 
a sense of justice, many of the ideas of right and wrong, 
together with nearly all the patriotism and enthusiasm, 
which have made human life in all ages heroic, it can be 
seen how complete was the challenge of Jesus to all the 
virtue of the world. 

A reformer he most certainly was, but not a reformer 
who acknowledged, that any good had been achieved 
before him, or that, by any of the methods, by which the 
world had seemed to have progressed, any further prog- 
ress was possible. If he never spake the words imputed 
to him in John's Gospel, they fitly describe his exclusive 
spirit, — " All that ever came before me are thieves and 
robbers." :1 He was the most uncompromising of inno- 
vators. He demanded new forms for the new spirit, new 
bottles for the new wine, no patching of the old garments 
with new cloth. So far as mankind had gone, it had gone 
all wrong. It must be born again. The old order must 
perish. The ideal city, the perfect political state, could 
not grow up out of a corrupt mankind, or be built of any 
materials the growth of the bad earth. It must come 
down from heaven ; and happy were those, who, listening 
to him and believing, should be thought worthy to be 
made citizens of it. 

Nothing was farther from his thought than to work 
with the spirit of his age, or of any age — to promote as 
much as possible all the good tendencies of the times. 
The spirit of the age, the tendencies of the times, were 
all toward evil and toward doom ; and the earth, replete 
with wickedness, was waiting for the manifestation of the 
wrath of God in its destruction. Suppose ye, he once 
exclaimed, that those Galileans whom Pilate slew in the 
midst of their sacrifices, or those eighteen upon whom 
the tower of Siloam fell and killed them, were sinners 
above other men, because they suffered such things ? " I 
tell you, Nay : but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise 
perish." b 

" Jc.lm \., 8. i' I, nk.- wii., 1-5. 



IOO OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

The hostility of Jesus to the existing political order is 
manifest in many of his reported words. In sending his 
disciples forth to teach, he said they were sheep going 
among the wolves. The wolves, who would devour them, 
were "the councils, governors, and kings" before whom 
they would be brought. He begged them to be wise and 
harmless, and assured them that their persecution 
should be a testimony against the nations and govern- 
ments. 11 

In the earlier period of his career, Jesus seems to have 
shared with moderation the national prejudices of his 
countrymen. He charged his disciples, in sending them 
out to proclaim the approach of the kingdom of heaven, 
to avoid the houses and cities of the Gentiles, and even 
of the Samaritans ; and it is quite certain that, during 
his lifetime, he did not afterward remove this interdict, 
or by precept or example disclose, that his message of 
repentance had any relevancy at all for other people than 
the Jews. b After his death, Paul justified his preaching 
to the Gentiles, not by any tradition of Jesus, but by a 
direct commission from the resurrected Master, who met 
him journeying to Damascus ; and Peter, by words that 
he heard from heaven in a vision he had at Joppa. When 
Jesus was in Phoenicia, though this must have been not 
quite serious, he told the woman whose daughter he healed 
that the Phoenicians were dogs only, while the Israelites 
were Jehovah's guests, seated at his table. 

But the cool incredulity of the learned and clerical 
classes, who controlled the intelligent public opinion in 
Galilee, and still more in Judea, contributed to weaken 
these prejudices, never very strong. To the Jew of his 
time, Moses was a great leader and law-giver, who, like 
the greatest of the prophets, had passed into heaven 
without having suffered death ; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob 
were great princes, who had held familiar conversations 
with Jehovah ; David was an heroic king, and an inspired 
poet, beloved of the Lord. For the books of the law, es- 
pecially the ten commandments, there was everywhere a 
veneration amounting to absolute awe. The Psalms and 
the prophecies were only in slightly less repute. We, who 
consider it nearly sacrilegious to speak otherwise than 

a Matt, x., 16-18. bMatt. x., 5. c Matt, xv., 24, 26 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS IOI 

with respect of Washington and his compatriots, who 
hold to the Declaration of Independence as embodying 
axioms of absolute truth, and for whom a citation of the 
Constitution is an end of all political disputation, can under- 
stand how, when to the Jews the Church and State were 
one, and the principles of government were at the same 
time a standard of faith and a rule of conduct, the mem- 
ory of the great leaders of the nation, the sanctity of their 
State papers and civil codes, and the authority of their 
politico-ecclesiastical annals and literature should have 
grown in reverence in the fifteen centuries of their na- 
tional existence, far more than the corresponding attach- 
ment for our heroic men, heroic annals, and national 
documents has grown in a single century. 

Jesus seems to have been considerably emancipated 
from this veneration. In the Sermon on the Mount, he 
quotes two of the fundamental precepts of the decalogue, 
the prohibition of murder and of adultery, not as the laws 
of God, not even as laws of Moses, or as imperative stat- 
utes of the national code, but as traditions of them of old 
time. He puts them in the same category with the direc- 
tion to hate one's enemy, which is not a precept of the 
Hebrew law at all, only an implication and inference, 
which an orthodox Jew would probably have denied and 
resented, even in his time. It is true he declared, in 
the same discourse, that he came not to destroy the law, 
and that not a jot or tittle should be taken from it; but he 
asserted that he came to fulfil it, — a process that must have 
seemed to his hearers quite as revolutionary, and which, 
oupled with the sweeping implications of the utter inade- 
quacy of even the moral features of it to influence 
character and form correct conduct, must have seemed 
eminently unpatriotic and sacrilegious to the conservative 
Jews. Doubtless, he shared John the Baptist's contempt 
for the exclusiveness arrogated by the children of Abra- 
ham, and broke up the prestige, which was accorded to 
the patriarchs in the kingdom of heaven, by intruding 
upon their select privacy a crowd of aliens from the four 
corners of the world." He was called the son of David. b 
He never so styled himself, and his frank avowal that he 
held himself greater than Solomon may indicate what he 

« M .nt. viii , 1 1, i.' : iii , o. I' Mall, w., 22 ; xx., 30, ji. 



102 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

thought of that royal lineage." While allowing that the 
scribes and Pharisees sat in Moses' seat and that the ob- 
servances they required were fairly binding upon the con- 
science of the Jewish citizen, he denounced their personal 
characters: he denied that, though Moses' representatives, 
they were to have the title or obedience of Rabbis, — him- 
self being the real master. He satirized their excessive 
devoutness, and the minute and formal character of their 
worship, which was only minute and formal, in the fidelity 
with which it followed the pattern laid down, as they be- 
lieved, by Moses himself. 1 ' 

The Jews bore the Roman yoke as impatiently as they 
had borne any earlier foreign domination. There were 
among them in Jesus' time, and before and afterward, 
strong aspirations for the restoration of their ancient 
autonomy, which had passed away forever, not so much 
on account of their especial corruption or lack of intelli- 
gence and bravery, as because the fashion of the world 
had been constantly changing. The earlier legends of the 
Hebrews represent the Semitic people as under kings 
whose kingdoms were only a single tribe or city. Greece, 
in the time of the Trojan war, was dominated by as many 
kings as it had principal cities. It was the tendency of 
progress for these separate sovereignties to melt into the 
greater empires of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome, 
each in succession enlarging and extending its sway, till 
the old civilization perished under the incursions of the 
barbarians. Barbarism manifested itself again in disin- 
tegration, and in the multiplicity of sovereigns and gov- 
ernments, and only in modern times is the old process of 
coalition and absorption resumed. The Jew had in his 
national literature an unusual stimulus to revolt against 
any attempt to subjugate him to the power or the law of 
other nations. He was naturally seditious ; and the priest- 
hood, his natural leaders, aided his revolutionary purposes, 
whenever they had the faintest prospect of success. 

Jesus kept himself wholly aloof from this feeling. To 
the Pharisees, he was obnoxious as destitute of love of 
country. Their question to him of the lawfulness of pay- 
ing tribute to Rome was evidently designed to prejudice 
him with the mob as an unpatriotic citizen. His evasion 

a Matt, xii., 42. '> Matt, xxiii. '' Matt, xxii., 17, 21. 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS IO3 

of it has always been commended for its readiness and 
sagacity, rather than as a logical solution of a difficulty. 
On the other hand, it is plain that the Roman aristocracy 
never considered him other than a Jew, and doubtless as 
ripe for sedition. Pilate, at the crucifixion, seemed at first 
to have been considerably influenced by the insinuations 
of the chief priests to believe that Jesus' real object was 
political, and insisted, against strong remonstrances, in 
affixing to the cross the superscription, "Jesus of Naza- 
reth, the king of the Jews." 11 This suspicion of both 
parties of him showed how fairly he had maintained his 
neutrality, the solution of which is already given in his 
doctrine of the kingdom of heaven, and gives further con- 
firmation to the impression, that that was his dominant 
idea. He was not of the Jewish party nor Caesar's friend, 
because, as he is declared to have told Pilate, " If my 
kingdom were of this world, then would my servants 
fight"; but it is not thence. 1 ' 

It seems proper to class with his political opinions the 
ideas of Jesus concerning wealth and poverty. Political 
economy has been fitly termed the science of wealth ; and 
a large part of the functions of civilized governments are 
those which pertain to the protection of men in their ac- 
quisition and possession of property. Jesus opens his 
earliest discourse, if the chronological order of Matthew 
be followed, with a benediction upon poverty. "Blessed 
are the poor," he said, "for theirs is the kingdom of 
heaven."" Matthew reports it, indeed: "Blessed are the 
poor in spirit." Poorness of spirit or poor-spiritedness 
has always been considered contemptible among mankind, 
who require of a man to be always superior to his fortune 
and, however narrow and restricted his possessions may 
be, demand that his soul shall be large and affluent. It is 
not to be believed that Jesus intended to pronounce a 
benediction on a quality, that all noble minds have agreed 
to consider despicable. Adding the words, "in spirit," 
the ordinary explanation of commentators is that the poor 
in spirit, whom Jesus blessed, are the humble, the meek, 
those who had overcome all pride and self-estimation. 
But, as he pronounced a benediction on the meek, and 
on those who patiently suffered persecution, it is not 

"Johnxix., 19-22. l>John xviii., 36. 'Matt. V., 3, 



104 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

to be supposed that he intended to mar the rhetorical 
excellence of these striking apothegms by such obvious 
tautology. Luke undoubtedly gives the true version of 
this saying, when he reports : " Blessed be ye poor, for 
yours is the kingdom of God," and makes it certain 
what class was meant by adding the converse, " Woe 
unto you that arc ricli ! for ye have received your consola- 
tion." ' In Luke's hands, the beatitudes become altogether 
more practical; and outward conditions are more regarded 
than metaphysical qualities. The poor in spirit, the pure, 
the merciful, the meek, those hungry for righteousness, 
are not mentioned ; but the poor in property, the hungry 
for food, those who weep and are hated and persecuted, 
are comforted with the assurance, that their reward in 
heaven shall be great, and that the rich, the sumptuously 
fed, the prosperous and gay, shall exchange conditions 
with them. 

While it has been agreed among the most careful 
scholars that the general details of events, as given by 
Matthew and Mark, conform most nearly in sequence of oc- 
currence with the facts, it is not so generally believed that 
the fragmentary manner in which Jesus' conversations 
are distributed through his career by Luke — the Sermon 
on the Mount being partly uttered, when he first began to 
preach, partly midway of his ministry, and a portion of it 
at Jerusalem just before his arrest — may not be the true 
arrangement. It seems more probable that Jesus avoided 
long discourses, as less effective than brief colloquies. A 
love of system seems to have guided Matthew or his 
editor in putting together all his ethical teachings, which 
were not pertinent to some incident of his life, and in 
arranging in a consecutive order the parables spoken to 
the disciples, and those spoken to the scribes and Phari- 
sees, after it had become impossible to determine the 
special time or occasion when they were in fact delivered. 

Jesus charged his disciples not to be thrifty or careful 
to accumulate property. Lay not up for yourselves treas- 
ures upon earth, but rather lay up for yourselves treasures 
in heaven ; for your hearts will be where your treasures 
are. 1 ' There was to be no compromise about this, no dili- 
gence in business and fervency of spirit, as Paul after- 

a Luke vi., 20, 24. b Man. vi., 1 j-34. c Rom. xii., ii. 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS IO5 

ward taught, no looking for the wealth of the kingdom of 
heaven with a prudent care for the things of this world. 
No man, he said, can serve two masters. If you love 
Mammon, you will hate God. Therefore, I say unto you, 
Take no thought for your life, to preserve which all prop- 
erty is sought. The life is the essential thing, food and 
raiment are the mere adjuncts of life. Take no thought 
even for life itself, nor for what you shall eat, drink, or 
wear. Do the fowls of the air sow, reap, and harvest 
crops ? yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Do the 
lilies toil or spin ? yet they are more beautiful than Sol- 
omon in his glory of royal vesture. What utter lack of 
faith to think the grass of the field, which blooms for a day, 
is thus cared for, and ye, the children of God, are not 
cared for ! Let the people of the world seek such things. 
Leave to your heavenly Father the provision for you, 
and seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, 
and all such things shall be given besides. Do not even 
prepare for to-morrow, which will take care of itself. 
The illustration of the birds was not quite satisfactory to 
him. The fowls of the air, though they are not anxious 
for the morrow, are certainly exceedingly diligent, not to 
say sordid, in their pursuit of what to eat during the 
entire day ; and, if they do not gather into store, as the 
thrifty squirrels and many of the rodents do, for winter 
supplies, they take thought of the morrow so far as to 
migrate from cold to warm regions, long before actual 
scarcity of food compels them. Men must be more abso- 
lutely careless even than that : only the lily, rooted to 
the ground, cares not for the juices that shall nourish it, 
nor forebodes the scythe that shall consign it to the oven. 
This must be the true type of the children's confidence in 
the bounty of their heavenly Father. 

But meantime, until the kingdom of heaven shall have 
come, what are his disciples, who have left all their indus- 
tries and discontinued their foresight for to-morrow's 
wants, at his invitation, to do? He had considered that 
ton. They arc to ask whatever they want of the heav- 
enly Father. Ask, he said, and ye shall receive ; seek, 
and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. 
This he reiterate! and emphasized. It is really, he 
believed, the method now. It is not the diligence of the 



106 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

bird, that finds the casual food in the lonely forest. Never 
entertain such a godless supposition. It is God, who, 
caring for the birds, his creatures, has with viewless hands 
scattered the food in the way of their guided flights. 
Are not men of more account than birds ? Every one 
that asketh receiveth ; he that seeketh findeth ; to him 
that knocketh, it is opened. If a child asks bread of 
a father, he will not give him a stone. If men, who are 
evil, still give to their children good things, shall not the 
heavenly Father give good things to his children for the 
asking ? a 

These were not, as has been generally regarded, mere 
sentiments of Jesus : they were the fundamental practical 
ideas of his living as well as of his philosophy. He found 
some of his disciples engaged in earning their livelihood by 
fishing. They left their nets, and followed him. This he 
seems to have required. 1 ' Whosoever forsaketh not all 
that he hath cannot be my disciple. Why should they 
go back even to take care of the nets ? They will need 
nets no more. He will make them catch men, and save 
them in the kingdom of heaven.' 1 Let the people of the 
world care for the nets, and pursue their old acquisitive- 
ness. The disciple has learned a new and easier road to 
more enduring wealth. 

He directed his disciples to sell their possessions and 
to bestow the proceeds in alms, to provide for themselves 
money-bags which would never grow old and a treasure 
in heaven. The abnegation of all worldly possessions, the 
cessation from all care for their accumulation, even for 
the daily necessities of living, was to be immediate and 
complete. When one inchoate disciple wanted leave of 
absence to attend his father's funeral, and another to take 
leave of his family and household, he would not accept 
their adhesion to him upon such terms. No man, he said, 
is fit for the kingdom of heaven who postpones it for any 
service however dutiful, or any leave-taking of affection 
however tender. It is putting one's hand to the plough 
and looking back with regret/ He invited men away 
from their bodily toils to share his methods of living, like 
the birds of the air, upon the provided bounty of God to 

"Matt, vii., 7-12. t> Mark i., 16-20. <• Luke xiv., 33. * Matt, xix., 27-30. 
e Luke xii., 13-40. f Luke ix., $<r-(<2. 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS IO7 

be had for the asking. Come unto me, ye that are bur- 
dened with labor, and find rest. Take my yoke upon you, 
which you will find light, and my burden, which is easy. a 

He himself seems to have lived in strict conformity to 
these principles. He had no house, no home, no prop- 
erty. He made it a boast that, in respect to possessions, 
he was worse off than the birds and the foxes. These 
had nests and holes : he had not where to lay his head. 
It is said of the band of devoted -women who followed him 
out of Galilee to Jerusalem previously to his arrest -and 
crucifixion that they ministered to him of their sub- 
stance. 1 ' It is probable that, after he abandoned his 
father's service and vocation and became a prophet, his 
friends charged themselves with his maintenance ; and 
the woven garment mentioned in the story of the cross 
was doubtless the gift of the affectionate admiration of 
the Galilean women, who clung to him with a fidelity 
exceeding that of his chosen apostles.' 1 The curious pro- 
vision of nature which leads one animal to befriend and 
provide for another of its own or even some other spe- 
cies, when blind, lame, or in infancy, happily character- 
ize- the associations of men. Some men have tastes so 
delicate or ambitions so lofty, that they disdain the ordi- 
nary prudence and thrift, that seem an instinct of the 
race. Jesus was one of these, and admiring and liberal 
patrons felt themselves honored and compensated in 
charging themselves with the sustenance, which an ab- 
sorbing enthusiasm had made to him contemptible. 

When the apostles were sent out to preach the coming 
kingdom of heaven, the question of subsistence came up 
in his mind. True to his principles, he makes it an ab- 
solute condition of their mission that there shall be no 
provision of money, food, or raiment.'' He had sedu- 
lously charged his disciples, in language which he thought 
it necessary to repeat and emphasize, that they should 
take no thought of their lives or for what they should eat, 
drink, or wear. Shall he shrink now from a practical 
application of his own principles? He has no such pur- 
pose. Enter with boldness any house, no matter whose. 
Salute it with a benediction of peace, and there remain, 

ft Matt, xi., 38-30. b Luke viii., 3. oLuke xxiii., 49, 55; Johnxix., 24. 

'1 Matt, xxvi., 56, 'Matt, x., 9. 



108 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

eating and drinking such things as the inmates give you ; 
for the laborer is worthy of his hire. a The least reward 
they can give for the tidings of the kingdom of heaven, 
and how to obtain an entrance into it, is to feed and 
lodge the messengers. Doubtless, the disciples did not 
readily adopt these suggestions. It is a part of the 
instinctive nature of man to make some provision for 
journeying among strangers ; and it required some empha- 
sis and some repetition to satisfy these peasants, who had 
perhaps prided themselves on paying in honest toil for all 
that they had consumed, that the direction " Put money in 
thy purse" had become superfluous, and that they were to 
live freely upon the bounty of those, whose guests unin- 
vited they should constitute themselves. Jesus seems 
himself to have challenged them to acknowledge the 
complete success of his commissariat. "When I sent 
you," he asked at Jerusalem, " without purse and scrip and 
shoes, lacked ye anything? And they said : Nothing." b 
Still, though they did not quite regret the throwing away 
for the kingdom of heaven's sake their property and their 
family ties, they were disposed to exaggerate a little the 
meritorious sacrifice they had thus made. Peter on one 
occasion thought fit to remind his master of his obliga- 
tion ; and Jesus, with a delicate and generous consideration 
for the infirmities of his followers, exclaimed: "Verily I 
say unto you, there is no man that hath left house, or 
parents, or brethren, or wife, for the kingdom of God's 
sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present 
time, and in the world to come life everlasting." c 

It is related that a young man of singularly blameless 
character came once to him, and asked what he should do 
to obtain the eternal life. Jesus first told him to avoid 
those sins which are prohibited in the law, and which, in 
that time, as in our time, the great body of reputable 
people find it easy to avoid. The young man professed 
that he had never stolen, nor borne false testimony, nor 
committed adultery nor murder; and that he had loved 
and honored his parents and dealt fairly with his neigh- 
bors. Then Jesus told him that, to enter the kingdom 
of heaven, he must sell all his property and give the pro- 
ceeds to the poor, and come and follow him, and obtain 

o Luke x., 5-8. I' Luke xxii., 35. c Matt, xix., 27-29 






POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS IO9 

treasure in heaven. The young man, who was rich, with- 
drew in sorrow. a Here is a very plain and practical 
direction that, to be a disciple of Jesus, a man must dis- 
possess himself of his property in favor of the poor. It 
is generally said by many, who claim special reverence for 
and allegiance to Jesus, that, in this declaration, he was 
not serious ; that the young man was a hypocrite, and 
Jesus, who saw through him, wished to rally and expose 
him. There is not the slightest foundation for suspecting 
the young man's integrity. Jesus did see through him, 
and, believing in his sincerity, loved him, and sought not 
to repel him, but to win his discipleship. It is entirely 
foreign to that serious enthusiasm, which characterized 
the mind of Jesus, to suspect him of mere levity under 
circumstances, which should call out only the most fervent 
and sincere feeling. The truth is, Jesus was unusually 
earnest and serious. The interview affected him, as it 
had the young man. After he had gone, Jesus said 
with great deliberation to his followers : " Verily I say 
unto you," — a form of speech he always seemed to use 
when he wished to s?y something fundamental and mem- 
orable, — "that a XlJci man shall hardly enter into the 
kingdom of heaven." And still dwelling upon the theme, 
though no one meantime had spoken : " Again I say unto 
you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a 
needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom 
of God." b 

The same hostility to the rich, and rejection of them 
as candidates for subjects of his kingdom, appear in 
several of the prominent parables, particularly in some 
told only by Luke, who, from the prominence he gives 
to all the anti-property opinions of Jesus, may be called 
the evangelist of the poor. Indeed, the rich, as a class, 
are more frequently made the subjects of his satire than 
any other class, not excepting the Pharisees. It is not 
at all surprising that James, who was his own brother, 
and must have been conversant with his antipathies, uses 
this vigorous language in his Epistle : " Go to now, ye rich 
men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come 
upon you ! Your riches are corrupted, your garments 
moth-eaten : your gold and silver are cankered ; and the 

» M.ut. xix., 16-22; Mark x., ax, >> Matt, xix., 23-26. 



I 10 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat 
your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasures to- 
gether for the last days."' 1 * 

In the parable of the sower and the seed, some seed 
fell among thorns, or, as was explained to the disciples, 
among men occupied with the cares of life, or, as Paul 
would say, quite respectfully, diligent in business ; and 
the deceitfulness of riches, the canker of gold and silver, 
choke the seed, and it will not bring forth the fruits of 
righteousness. b 

It seemed to Jesus a grievance, not worthy of the inter- 
ference of a just man, that one should be defrauded by 
his brother out of his father's inheritance; and the dis- 
honest heir must have derived much satisfaction from the 
rebuke, which fell upon the brother who had suffered, 
rather than upon the brother, who had committed the 
fraud. It is of no consequence, thought Jesus ; and went 
on to say : There was a certain rich man, who, when he 
had harvested a great crop, said to himself (not even to 
his intimate friend) : I have not room for my fruits. I will 
pull down my barns, and build larger ; and I will say to 
my soul, Thou hast much goods laid up for many years, 
take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. To whom God 
said : Thou fool ! this night shall thy life be required of 
thee. Whose, then, shall be those things thou hast pro- 
vided ? c This parable plainly implies that, to Jesus, all 
providence for the future, all satisfaction in business pros- 
perity, however fair and just, were not only wrong, but 
impious. 

Indeed, we are compelled to entertain the suspicion 
that the sentiment of justice was only feeble in Jesus, 
and greatly encroached upon by his general sentiments 
of pity for the weak and the poor. He told a story of a 
dishonest steward, who had committed defalcations upon 
the trust property of his master, which he was employed 
to manage, who, when he was detected, sought to make 
friends with his master's debtors by falsely altering the 

a James v., 1-3. 

• Luther, and many others in the Church of scarcely less eminence, have doubted the 
authenticity of this Epistle. To such as share their suspicions, these words can of course 
bring only' the authority which a writer, evidently of the school of James, and sharing fully 
the ideas he is known to have maintained antagonistic to the teachings and tendencies of 
Paul, deserves to have. 

h Matt, xiii., 22. c Luke xii., 13-23. 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS I I I 

ledgers to their advantage. It is even said that Jesus 
commended the shrewdness of this proceeding, without 
condemning its injustice, and uttered by way of improve- 
ment that puzzle of all preachers and commentators : 
" And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the 
mammon of unrighteousness ; that, when ye fail, they may 
receive you into everlasting habitations." a 

It is but just, however, to say that, in Jesus' rules of 
conduct, the question of justice, of what is exactly due to 
another, has but little place. To petty, rigid justice, he 
opposes, not injustice, but loose and liberal charity. It is 
as if he should say : You are exceedingly careful to render 
to every man his due. Render him more than his due. 
Overpay your debt. Shame his narrow scale of exacti- 
tude by your overwhelming bounty. In liberal natures 
like his, the sentiment of justice is apt to be feeble. 
Hence, to him, the servant that kept his lord's talent 
wrapped in a napkin, neither lessening nor spending it, 
was an unprofitable servant, to be bound hand and foot, 
and cast into outer darkness. His master was hard and 
extortionate; but it was by bounty, and not by justice, 
that his obdurate heart was to be touched.'' 

He said the courtesies and civilities of society were not 
to be extended to those that could return them. Gifts did 
not create obligation. Debt and credit are not to be kept 
in beneficences. When thou makest a feast, invite not 
thy friends, brothers, kinsmen, nor rich neighbors, for 
they will invite thee in turn, and thy good deed will 
have been cancelled ; but invite the poor, the maimed, 
the lame, and the blind, who cannot recompense thee, 
and thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of 
the just. c 

To the wedding feast, — his frequent illustration of the 
kingdom of heaven, — were invited a prosperous land- 
holder, a large owner of cattle, and a bridegroom, all types 
of the successful and the wealthy classes. Too much 
occupied with their good fortune, they sent polite excuses. 
Then, the angry master of the feast hurried in the poor, 
the maimed, the halt, and the blind, and, as there was 
still room, actually compelled the loiterers in the high- 

» Luke xvi., 1-12. b Luke xix., 12-27. 

c Luke xiv., 12-14. 



112 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

ways and by the hedges to come in. a The rich came in 
by the favor of invitation, the poor in the right of their 
poverty; and there is a still lower class, upon whom the 
honor is actually thrust. 

To the covetous Pharisees, he told the parable of Dives 
and Lazarus. '' This parable is still told with fearful im- 
pressiveness to the tender apprehension of childish minds, 
on account of the vivid picture it has of the dismal condi- 
tion of those who are punished in hell. This, however, is 
a mere incident of the story, and by no means its chief 
lesson. Doubtless, Jesus accepted the traditional, con- 
ventional idea of hell, which his countrymen generally 
held. It seems to the sensitive modern mind incredible 
that the Hindu, the Jew, and the Christian should, in 
their several methods, entertain a vague idea of a place of 
indescribable and perpetual misery, and, in their thought, 
coolly regard it as the inevitable fate of their neighbors 
or their enemies, of, in fact, the whole race of mankind 
outside of the circle of their sympathy and fellowship. 
But history compels us to believe, that the human mind 
can entertain such a conception without forfeiting its in- 
stinctive cheerfulness. Jesus was telling his story in his, 
and in the vivid Oriental way. The story, like all his 
moral allegories, needed a catastrophe : it was not impor- 
tant what the catastrophe should be. And so he took 
the conventional hell of his age, just as Shakspeare in 
the drama of " Hamlet " takes the conventional purga- 
tory of mediaeval Catholicism, that he may inspire fresh 
pity for the murdered king condemned to such a fate. 
In either case such dramatic use of a popular notion does 
not of itself imply the author's faith in it. The real ani- 
mus of the famous parable is its imputation against the 
rich and its comfort for the poor, whom it is intended to 
console with the assurance of compensation. It puts 
into an allegory what stood before in an apothegm : 
" Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 
Woe unto ye that are rich ! for ye have received your 
consolation." Of Dives, it is simply said he was a rich 
man, who clothed and fed himself according to his con- 
dition. It is not said that he was a vicious man, an 
impious man, an oppressive or even a proud man. The 

a Luke xiv., 16-24. ** Luke xvi., 14, 19-31. c Luke vi., 20, 24. 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 113 

fact that he suffered a poor wretch, whose diseased 
condition made him a disagreeable and even loathsome 
object, to lie at his gate and be fed with fragments 
from his table, indicates rather more humane feeling, 
than is found in the average religious man of our time, 
who would contrive to rid himself speedily of Lazarus' 
presence at his front door by having him removed to 
a public hospital or almshouse. The artistic structure 
of this allegory not only exhibits the genius of Jesus, 
but there gleams through the lurid horrors of the picture 
flashes of the humor, with which, to a certain extent, 
the grave enthusiasm of his character was tempered. 
For in hell Dives is made to exhibit traits of character 
that fairly coerce our admiration. It is one of the marks 
of a gentleman that he shall not magnify his personal 
inconveniences, and shall accept with thanks the most 
trivial alleviations. Could anything exceed the modesty 
of his request that Lazarus, who he doubtless thought 
would go with alacrity on such an errand to please his 
old patron and benefactor, should be sent with a drop of 
water to cool his tongue ? With a cool tongue, with 
which to continue the conversation, he will be too polite 
to think of remonstrating against the other considerable 
discomforts of his situation. When this small indulgence, 
purely, as it seems, on the score of physical impossibility, 
is denied, he does not roar nor blaspheme, nor, for a 
single moment, lose his heroic patience or cheerfulness. 
With a disinterestedness which, in his situation, is per- 
fectly sublime, he passes at once to thinking of his five 
brothers, who have doubtless inherited his dangerous 
wealth, and bethinks himself how they may be warned of 
their liability to the same place of torment. Abraham, 
who henceforth befriends Lazarus in heaven, as Dives 
was wont to do on earth, explains to the amazed rich 
man how the change has come about. " Son," he says, 
— there was a palpable sarcasm in thus making him a 
devout and orthodox Israelite, whom even Abraham rec- 
ognized as of his seed, — " Son, remember, that thou in 
thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise 
Lazarus evil things ; but now he is comforted, and thou 
art tormented." Dives is in hell, because he was one 
of the rich, who could not enter the kingdom of heaven 



I 14 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

any more than a camel could pass through the eye of a 
needle. On the other hand, Lazarus, who is sheltered 
in Abraham's bosom, is not described as a good man, 
a pious man, or even a believing man. Blessed are ye 
poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven, in virtue of 
your poverty. The poor have the gospel preached to 
them. The rich, who cannot enter the kingdom, need 
not even be invited. 

It is not difficult to trace the consecutive order of 
Jesus' thought. He had been telling his disciples that, 
they must forsake, nay, even hate, father, mother, wife, 
children, brothers, sisters, all their possessions ; a that 
they must do this deliberately, carefully, counting the 
cost beforehand. Then, he had told three parables, 
which indicated, that he preferred repentant prodigals, 
men who had come back from deep experience of dissi- 
pation and excesses, to the just persons that need no 
repentance, to the careful and prudent who had saved 
their patrimony by economy and self-denial. 11 From this, 
he had passed to speak with qualified commendation of 
the steward who had plundered his master, who was rich, 
but had made himself friends by fraudulently understating 
the debts of those who owed him, because they were 
poor. c And when the Pharisees, who were covetous, 
derided him, he startles them with this exaggerated 
picture of the compensations, which, in the kingdom of 
heaven, are provided for the rich and for the poor re- 
spectively.* 1 

To the mind of Jesus, the ordinary avocations of 
human life, to which men go by the uncontrollable in- 
stincts of their nature, were impious. In his description 
of the suddenness of the opening of the new order of 
things, he said, it would be as in the time of Noah's 
flood, and of Sodom's destruction by fire and brimstone, 
when men ate and drank, bought, sold, planted, builded, 
married and were given in marriage. Like the rich man 
in the parable, the calamities fell upon these ancient 
people, not more to punish their sins, than to punish their 
secular carefulness about life and property. And so, 
above all, he counselled them against that human instinct, 
which, in fire and shipwreck, prompts every hand to save 

« Luke xiv., 25-33. b Luke xv., 11-32. c Luke xvi., 1-13. <l Luke xvi., 14, iq 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 115 

what is possible of possessions/ 1 He that is on the 
housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come 
down to take it away, nor he who is in the field return to 
save his treasures. 13 It is impossible to overlook the fact 
that Jesus warred strenuously against the property in- 
stinct in man, as hostile to that state of mind, which 
was a fit preparation for the kingdom of heaven ; and 
that this teaching is a fundamental principle in all his 
teaching. 

Outside of the circle of his disciples, and in portions of 
Palestine where he had never been, his gospel seems to 
have been understood as a gospel of poverty. When he 
was passing through Jericho on his fatal journey to Jeru- 
salem, a rich publican named Zaccheus, who might have 
been a Jewish proselyte, but was not probably a descend- 
ant of Abraham, was moved to become his disciple. 
Jesus hears of his purpose, and visits him at his house. 
Zaccheus does not wait to be challenged, as the young 
man had been : "Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto 
the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven ; and come, 
follow me." He apparently understands from public 
rumor that this is the everywhere prescribed condition 
of discipleship. He makes tender at once of all his prop- 
erty. One-half, he says, I give to the poor forthwith ; 
out of the other half, let restitution be made fourfold, if I 
have taken anything by false accusation, as, in his odious 
office, he doubtless believed he had. Jesus accepts the 
offer, and declares that he is a true son of Abraham, and 
that the salvation which was promised to Abraham's seed 
has come to him and to his family.' 1 Nowhere in the 
record is found such an absolute commendation of a 
convert. It was because no convert had so wholly em- 
braced his ideas. 

The harmony and interdependence of the ideas of Jesus 
now begin to be quite apparent. From the belief that the 
world itself, in all that relates to the structure of human 
society, in the condition and destiny of its human inhabi- 
tants, is about to be suddenly brought to an end, natu- 
rally proceeds the conclusion, that all care for subsistence 
is superfluous, and that wealth, which is the result of past 
labor and prudence, and the assurance of future subsist- 

»Luk<j xvii., 26-30. b Luke xvii., 31. oMatt. vi, 32, 33, <1 Luke xix., 1-10. 



I l6 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

ence, is no longer desirable. Jesus seems to have con- 
cluded that there was wealth enough, already earned, to 
last the world till its dissolution, and that all devotion 
thereto was a distraction, which wholly unfitted men for 
the preparation to meet the catastrophe. He admitted 
the necessity of food, clothing, and shelter; but he had 
two resources, either of which was an ample provision. 
His first resource was the free bounty of the heavenly 
Father, whose gifts were to be had for the asking. Will 
even an unkind father give bread to his children, and 
will not a good and perfect God ? Will the beneficent 
God feed the birds of the air, and clothe in beauty the 
grass doomed to the scythe, and will he not feed and 
clothe his children? 11 Besides this, the destitute were 
to share the free gifts of the rich, b who, coming into 
the kingdom of heaven, must show the sincerity of their 
repentance by forsaking all things, selling their posses- 
sions, d and bestowing the proceeds upon the poor, already 
in the kingdom in virtue of their poverty. 

If such a catastrophe as Jesus apprehended was im- 
pending, no prudence, or forethought, or industry was 
necessary to provide for the wants of the brief interval 
of human life. The catastrophe, which he had asseverated 
with a verily, verily, would occur in the lifetime of that 
generation, 6 did not occur, and up to this last period of 
the nineteenth century has not occurred. If Jesus came 
again after his death, it was not with a glittering escort 
of angels, the splendor of his appearing flashing from 
one side of the heavens to the other. He came not to 
shake/ still less (as the apostle believed) to remove the 
earth, preparatory to the new earth and new heavens, in 
which righteousness should dwell. If he came at all, it 
was in no official character, clothed with no divine powers, 
doing no more any works of healing or dispossession of 
evil spirits, and, what is most perplexing of all, without 
that fine power of uttering pithy and vigorous words 
which characterized his human intellect. He does not 
confront the High Priest, nor awe with the glories of 
his risen state the high social and ecclesiastical circle of 
Jerusalem, that had disdained him as a Galilean enthu- 



,7-12. h Matt, v., 42, 45 ; Luke vi., 30-34. c Luke xiv., 33. 

"Luke xii., 33. * Matt, xxiv., 34, 35. f Heb. xii., 27. 



J 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 117 

siast. Like a poor ghost only, he manifests himself, 
chiefly to susceptible Mary Magdalene; or, most pri- 
vately, to a small circle of his chosen followers, and 
some even of them did not hesitate to express their 
doubt that they had indeed seen him at all. 8 

But whatever occurred in the invisible world, or in the 
policy or counsels of the heavens, of which nothing can 
be known, it is certain that the secular order went on. 
The sun rose in the east as before, not darkened nor 
changed into blood. 1 ' Not a star was missing in its place. 
The quiet movements of the heavenly bodies revealed no 
shock, and no sympathy with any new force or will in the 
mechanism of the universe. That mysterious power, call 
it nature, call it law, call it God, by which all things 
subsist and by which all things are controlled, utterly 
declined to be turned out of its ancient courses and to 
forsake its long-observed methods, to promote any new 
order of things, or to usher in with imposing scenic phe- 
nomena a new era of human or angelic society. It is 
only in a poetic sense that the sun, moon, and stars, and 
the aspects of the sky, sympathize with the profound 
sorrows or the profound yearnings of the deeply moved 
human spirit. It is the extravagance of enthusiasm that 
commands the sun and moon to stand still, that the great 
struggle we have on our hands may go on to victory. 

What became alike necessity and duty under the 
changed expectation ? Evidently, just what not only the 
world, but the disciples and worshippers of Jesus, actually 
did. They returned to their work; they prudently saved 
the earnings of their labor; they planted, they builded, 
they married and were given in marriage, and gradually 
the sense of impiety in so doing faded away. 

There may be genial regions of the globe where the 
free bounty of nature invites man to repose, and abates 
the intensity of the struggle, by which mankind have 
maintained their existence against the encroachments of 
various and petty forms of inferior life, and against the 
rigor of climate. Palestine, where the fig and olive grew 
wild, and where wild honey and edible insects abounded 
in the wilderness, doubtless offered life to men on much 
conditions than does Europe and America to-day. 

"Man. xxviii. , 17. I'Matt. xxiv , z<>. 



Il8 OF IX IONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

But how does the precept, Take no thought of the morrow 
mock the wretched tenants of crowded northern cities, 
whose whole life is a painful thought of to-morrow's 
subsistence, and how to make adequate to it the scanty 
income of to-day ? How applicable is the economy of the 
kingdom of heaven to the dwellers within the arctic circle, 
who, in an atmosphere that inflicts sudden death upon 
all not shielded by the skins of the most cunning ani- 
mals, or not warmed by intense fires, which, in that tree- 
less zone, only animal oils supply, must brave the perils of 
ocean and frost to gather every day their food and fuel ? 
The law of life is substantially the same everywhere. It 
is only by taking intense thought for life that men can 
preserve it. Not all the ravens are fed. If the sparrows 
do not fall to the ground without the heavenly Father, 
they do nevertheless fall. With all the power of associ- 
ated man to help his race, with the great advantage which 
the social state, rising into the more complex structures of 
cities and governments, gives to individual men in sys- 
tematizing and making effective their diligence to obtain 
sustenance ; with the large surplus which industrious peo- 
ple accumulate ; with the organized charities which form 
a part of the voluntary or legal institutions of all civilized 
communities, men do starve to death in Ireland as well as 
in America, India, and China. Cover it up with what 
sentiment we may, there stands for all men the primeval 
law, — In the sweat of thy forehead shalt thou cat bread. 

Paul himself, with an admiration for his master almost 
idolatrous, was one of the first of his followers to awake 
from the dream of a life without labor, and a subsistence 
as precarious as the birds. Peter, true to the maxim of 
Jesus that the laborer was worthy of his hire, that they 
who preached the good news of the kingdom were not to 
provide purse, nor scrip, nor extra clothing, but were to 
be fed by the bounty of converts, so far enlarged that 
bounty as to share it with a wife and a sister, made com- 
panions of his mission. Paul nobly relinquished alto- 
gether this perquisite of apostleship." He found time, 
while exhorting to faith and repentance, to work at his 
trade, and not only to support himself, but to have some- 
thing to give to relieve the necessities of the sick and 

a I. Cor. i.\., 5, 6, 15. 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS II9 

disabled. He urged his followers diligently to work, that 
they might have something to bestow upon the distressed, 
and might escape the scandal that would fall upon idle- 
ness and dependence. Those among the disciples that 
would not work he denounced as disorderly and busy- 
bodies/ He thought less of men that did not earn the 
bread that they ate ; and, so far from encouraging the 
habit of taking no thought for what they should eat, he 
acknowledged that his remedy for such an unscrupulous 
way of living upon the bounty of others was to cut off 
the supplies of every able-bodied man, who thought him- 
self exempt. from the condition of labor.'' 

Paul does not seem to have shared James' antipathy 
to the rich, nor to have held, with Jesus, that they could 
not enter the kingdom of heaven without dispossessing 
themselves of their wealth. Wealthy men had accepted 
his gospel, and been received by him among the believers ; 
and these, in a letter to Timothy, he fully recognized 
as heirs of the promise of the kingdom. " Charge them 
that are rich," he writes, "in this world, that they be not 
high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the 
living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that 
they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to 
distribute, willing to communicate." Thus, wealth, in- 
stead of being an impediment to salvation, was God's own 
gift, richly given, freely to be enjoyed. 

While the apprehension of the overthrow of all things 
was vivid in the minds of the early Christians, as it 
continued to be during the lifetime of the apostles, the 
contempt of labor and the repudiation of property, as 
something offensive to the coming king, continued among 
them. It is related that, after the death of Jesus, the 
disciples were together and had all things in common, 
and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to 
all as every man had need, and continued every day with 
one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house 
to house, eating their food with gladness and singleness 
of heart. 11 After they became a multitude, they remained 
of one heart and mind, neither said any of them that 
aught of the things which he possessed was his own ; but 

all. IK '■ 1. 'I'll •, 1, ii., ., ; [I. Cor. xi., 9; Acts xx., 33, 34. 

ol. Timothy vi., 17, iS. d Acts ii., 44-46. 



120 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

they had all things in common. Jesus' methods proved 
confessedly successful, even after the little flock had 
grown a powerful community. After his death, they 
were constrained to answer the question, which, in 
modest self-reproach, they did not answer when he put it ; 
•• When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, 
lacked ye anything ? " a The new economy is successful. 
There were none among them that lacked anything ; "for 
as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, 
as Jesus had commanded them," and brought the prices of 
the things that were sold, and laid them down at the 
apostles' feet ; and distribution was made unto every man 
according as he had need. b 

The church at Jerusalem seems to have been estab- 
lished and maintained upon the plan of confiscating the 
property of the rich converts for the benefit of the poor. 
When this resource failed, as in the nature of things it 
soon must have done, the believers subsisted upon the 
donations of those gathered into the faith in the populous 
and wealthy Greek and Roman cities, mainly through the 
successful propagandism of Paul. And, indeed, suspicious 
as the leaders at Jerusalem were of the dogmas and 
practices which Paul held and taught — as is most manifest 
from the New Testament records — or in reference to his 
indecorous habit of working as a mechanic, to his admis- 
sion of rich men to the communion of the saints without 
compelling them to surrender their wealth to be divided 
among the poor, and to his frequent exhortations to 
converts to labor diligently for the purpose of having 
something to bestow upon the needy, they could not very 
consistently condemn what redounded to their own ad- 
vantage. For the Jerusalem church, under the strict 
regime of Jesus himself, seems to have come into an elee- 
mosynary relation with all the other churches, and to 
have been supported all through the apostolic period by 
collections gathered wherever a new Christian community 
was planted. It is not known whether this relation was 
maintained until the capture of the city by Titus, and the 
scattering of the Church, or whether the Gentile converts 
under the teachings of Paul — in which a vein of satire is 
not wholly absent — grew weary of supporting their idle 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 121 

brethren, and at last applied to them the rough method 
which he ordered adopted at Thessalonica, — " If any will 
not work, neither shall he eat." a 

For a world not suddenly ending, as had been confi- 
dently believed, but persisting in going on, and going on 
in much the old way, the Christians found it necessary to 
modify the strictness and scope of the command of their 
master, to forsake and hate houses, lands, and all their 
possessions, to become his disciples. The common be- 
liever might, and, as Paul insisted, must be not slothful in 
business. He might even propose, as an end of his dili- 
gence, the reward of money even to the extent of wealth. 
He might accumulate property to give of its income and 
surplus to the necessities of the saints. b He would be 
worse than an unbeliever, if he did not accumulate suffi- 
cient to provide for his own household. Rich men came 
into the churches without scandal; and it was not long 
before the churches, instead of levying from them at the 
very door the surrender of all their riches, flattered and 
courted them for their patronage ; and Lazarus fed from 
the crumbs of the table of Dives, without the rude re- 
minder that, after death, the former should rest in the 
bosom of Abraham and the latter howl in torment. 

But so fundamental a part of the system which Jesus 
sought to establish, and died to consecrate, could not 
be lost. The Christian priesthood gradually rose. The 
missionaries of the gospel, to the earliest of whom great 
reverence and authority were accorded, as the witnesses 
of Jesus' words and works while alive, and of his resur- 
rection after his crucifixion, were universally considered 
to be elevated above the drudgery and degradation of 
toil. Let the preachers of the gospel at least live of 
the gospel. Even sturdy Paul would not give up this 
prerogative of his profession. Besides this class — quite 
large when compared with the body of believers — all who, 
as Jesus had said, would be perfect, all who would insure 
their entrance into his kingdom, when it should come, 
continued to adopt his ideas about property, as they did 
also his ideas of the relation of the sexes. They became 

•UI.Thess. iii., ,., 

t> Acts xL, 30; xxiv., 17; Rom. kv., 25,26; I. Cor. svi , 1-3; II. Cor. viii., a 

c I. Tim. v., 8. 



122 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

monks and nuns, making themselves celibates for the 
kingdom of heaven's sake, having their goods in common, 
and were supported by the donations of those, who were 
awed by the austerity of their piety. 

The attitude of the modern Christian Church toward 
property and wealth is quite the reverse of that of the 
early Church. All through mediaeval time and down to 
the present, Christianity has been the great bulwark of 
property, and pronounces benedictions upon the rich. It 
has not in terms transposed the beatitudes of Jesus, and 
said : Blessed are ye rich, for yours is the kingdom of 
heaven ; but it has practically said so. A sentiment is 
still cherished, which respects the virtuous poor, and the 
places of Christian worship are nominally open to them ; 
but, more and more, the fellowship of the Church confines 
itself to the prosperous classes. The old meeting-houses, 
such as were open fifty years ago to all classes in New 
England, have one after the other fallen into decay ; and 
their places have been supplied by small and costly tem- 
ples, whose whole interiors are occupied with expen- 
sively finished and upholstered pews, where the weekly 
accommodations for a family cost more for persons of 
small means than the rental of a dwelling-house. The 
poor are not excluded from these religious assemblies, 
but no seats are provided for them. The whole aspect 
of the place as effectually excludes them as would an 
opera house or a private club house or a wedding in an 
aristocratic family, where not only the cost of admission, 
but the rigid etiquette of dress and manners, interposes 
barriers which the sensitive poor cannot pass. 

In assemblies from which the classes, that made up the 
wedding feast, the type according to Jesus of the king- 
dom of heaven, are carefully excluded, the preacher of 
the gospel, such as eighteen centuries of contact with 
the influences of civilization has made it, cannot repeat 
with any fervor or directness the denunciations of the 
rich, which form so considerable a part of the recorded 
discourses of his master. He is expected, with rhetorical 
ingenuity and delicate tact, to refine and explain them 
away. How can he denounce, as outside of the kingdom 
of heaven, those who, already in possession of its out- 
works, hold the purse and scrip, and can testify their 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS I23 

disapprobation by withholding his support, and leaving 
him no resource but that which Jesus said was sufficient, 
— to ask of the heavenly Father whatever was needed ? 

The communistic principle, which, as has been seen, 
was the natural outcome of the property ideas dissemi- 
nated by Jesus, has lasted considerably longer than those 
ideas themselves. From the primitive Church, it passed 
to various monastic orders, that still perpetuate it in con- 
nection with celibacy. In modified forms, it has appeared 
in the economy and creed of several Christian sects, like 
the Moravians and the Shakers. But the generally ac- 
credited Christianity comes more and more to disown and 
antagonize it ; and to-day, both in Europe and America, 
the bodies of men who hold the tenets of Jesus in refer- 
ence to property, and who are seeking or have sought to 
embody them in a new social order recognizing the com- 
plete equality of men, are generally decried as antichris- 
tian and atheistic. 

This departure of the ostensible followers of Jesus from 
the principles which so widely formed the structure of 
his system, so far as it was a system fit for a subsisting 
world, is not mentioned to condemn it. There have been, 
since the first century of our era, many hundred genera- 
tions of men, upon whom the effect of the passion for 
possessing property in its influence upon character has 
been carefully watched and noted. If the successors of 
Jesus lack the prescient accuracy of his judgment, they 
have judged upon much larger data, and with the oppor- 
tunity of correcting a too hasty generalization by delib- 
1 and concurrent consideration. 

There are certain faults of character which the posses- 
sion of wealth seems to aggravate. Pride, arrogance, 
indifference to human suffering, are apt to attain a rank 
growth in the over-prosperous man; while two dangers 
beset his path, — cither, that the sordid habits he formed 
while he was painfully and with self-denial accumulating 
money by grovelling labor or narrow saving, shall pinch 
his soul and make it hard and base, or, that the consid- 
eration of having much goods laid up for many years shall 
invite to sensual indulgence. Ordinarily, the first danger 
becomes fatal to the men who themselves, by slow 
industry and painful methods, acquire wealth : the latter 



124 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

besets especially those, who inherit it, or come to it by 
fortunate enterprise. 

On the other hand, more insidious and more deadly 
perils beset the poor. The poor, especially in the pres- 
ence of the pomp and luxury of the rich, become morose, 
vindictive, envious, and censorious, a prey to more subtle 
vices, and harder to eradicate from the soul, than sen- 
suality, often a taint of the blood. In the struggle for 
life, the steadily unsuccessful grow exasperated ; and the 
most upright principles yield many times before the press- 
ure of an adversity, that is suggestive of a malignant 
ill-will, provoking to retaliation. The daily necessity for 
labor to the full extent of the bodily powers, to support 
the necessities of life, is, for myriads of human beings, 
an effectual guarantee of temperance and chastity. The 
self-denial which men begin to exercise to acquire food 
for their offspring becomes a habit, a strength, a con- 
scious power of the soul. The man who can labor after 
fatigue and pain learns first what duty means. He says, 
/ wish I could do this, but I must do that. The more he 
does what he must, rather than what he wishes, the 
more of a civilized, moral, religious creature he becomes. 
When he has followed duty in one direction against 
inclination, he has learned the mystery of noble living, 
and is in the royal road to all virtue. These high influ- 
ences sanctify labor, and make the beginnings of the 
acquisition of wealth salutary and even sacred. Nor the 
beginnings alone ; for, carefully to note our own obser- 
vations, their net result would be that • more men are 
made generous, public-spirited, refined, lovers of pure 
and simple pleasures by becoming rich, than are made 
humble, patient, magnanimous, and upright by long 
and hopeless poverty. This is proved by the statistics 
of most civilized countries, in which, though the prosper- 
ous, particularly the suddenly prosperous, classes would 
be found tainted with crimes of oppression, fraud, and 
profligacy, the great army of the criminal classes, with 
which society has constantly to maintain a warfare to 
insure its own preservation, is recruited from the ranks of 
the poor. The best wisdom of his race was not at all in 
accord with that of Jesus, when it uttered from the I 
a cynical king the prayer, " Give me neither poverty nor 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 1 25 

riches ; feed me with food convenient for me, lest I be full, 
and deny thee, . . . lest I be poor and steal, and take the 
name of my God in vain." a 

In nothing, however, did Jesus show the original force 
of his own mind, and its impatience of dominant, national 
and conventional ideas, more than in his opinions concern- 
ing property. As Moses, brought up under the intense 
other-worldliness of the Egyptians — than whom, it is prob- 
able, no race of men ever lived with death, judgment, and 
the retributions of eternity so awfully impressed upon 
their imaginations — came to have a supreme contempt for 
a faith that had palpably failed to make men either virtu- 
ous or happy ; and determined to base a new religious cul- 
tus on sanctions, limited wholly to the life of this world, 
so Jesus, a man also of transcendent genius, determined 
to strike at the very root of the religious cultus of his race 
and time. The Jews preserve to this day the dominant 
trait of the national character in their devotion to wealth. 
Abraham was great in the extent of his fields and past- 
ures, in silver and gold, in flocks and herds, in depend- 
ants and servants. Jacob, out of the line of the first-born, 
the father of the nation, was great in the ingenious con- 
trivances of his thrift. All the law of Moses was built 
upon the sanction, not of rewards and punishments in 
an after-life, but of large possessions, and prosperous 
fortunes in a long human life, if men should keep its 
precepts; but if they failed to keep them, of famines, 
drouths, pillage and enslavement. The very ten com- 
mandments were promulgated mainly in the interest of 
property. It is of the nature of the reformer, that he 
is profoundly disappointed in the results of the culture 
that has gone before him, and distrustful of the ideas 
that underlie that culture. Behold the fruit of the 
Mosaic dispensation, — of the soul of man oblivious of 
the life to come, turned sordidly upon this world, wealth 
and long life its chief goods ! Let the pendulum swing 
again to the other side. What is the value of life ? Of 
what advantage is it to gain the whole world ? He that 
seeketh his life shall lose it. A man's life consisteth 
not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth. 
Jesus sought to restore to life its mystery, its seriousness, 

» Prov. xxx., 8, 0. 



126 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

its awful import, as a threshold of an immortal life, the 
gate of entrance to the kingdom of heaven. The Chris- 
tian cultus, almost lost now in the accretions of an insid- 
ious civilization, that it could not resist, is the fruit of his 
enthusiasm. 



CHAPTER V. 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS. 

" Let us beware of awarding to the founder of the Church any honor 
which a subsequent time may be compelled to recall. The only service the 
human race can render such a being as Jesus is to study the actual facts, and 
not the desirable facts, of the great historic page of his life." — Prof. David 
Swing. 

Closely connected with the political ideas of Jesus, 
and in some directions blended with them, are his ethical 
ideas, the principles which he declared should regulate 
conduct. It were most desirable to present them in a 
system, to indicate the axioms, upon which they rest, and 
the scheme of an ideal life of which they formed the 
elements. If we could find, in the memorabilia of Jesus' 
life, his system unfolded by himself, if he had declared 
the primal truths, upon which his soul rested, and to 
which he confessed allegiance, it would be very easy to 
express his ethical precepts in a creed or in a philos- 
ophy, and to consider them under his weighty and august 
authority. That his mind was capable of such generaliza- 
tion his conversations plainly imply. For, while com- 
mending virtuous conduct rather upon its reasonableness 
than upon his own, or the divine authority, his habit 
seemed to be to find the underlying principle consonant 
to the human reason, which is the sanction of the 
virtue enjoined. 

Thus, in the Sermon on the Mount, when he pro- 
nounces a certain condition of life or state of the heart 
good or blessed, as the poor, the sorrowing, the meek, 
the pure, and the persecuted, he feels called upon to 
give, as a reason for his estimate, the temporal or 
spiritual advantage, that shall befall them in conse- 
quence of such condition or affection. They shall enjoy 
the kingdom of heaven, they shall be comforted, they 
shall see God, they shall inherit the renown of the perse- 



128 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

cuted prophets. He said his followers were to be heroic 
in their suffering of evil, ascetic in the repression of appe- 
tite and resentment; and that they were to meet violence, 
not by resistance or remonstrance, but by inviting new 
assault, because the grade of goodness taught and prac- 
tised by the strictest piety of his time was not a quali- 
fication for entrance even into the kingdom of heaven. 
Daring and sublime must be the flight of the soul in the 
higher atmosphere of an ideal nobleness to reach the 
heavenly blessedness, and no easy or commonplace con- 
formity to the standard of the scribes and Pharisees, or of 
the philosophers, could be accepted as a commutation 
of the rigid self-denial, the vivisection of all- the instincts 
of the animal nature, which he made the discipline of a 
soldier of the cross. He said that enemies were to be 
loved, because God gave the blessing of light and rain to 
bad and good men alike ; and that men must be perfect 
— that is, sublime in their love of those who injured and 
hated them — in order to be like God. Prayer and alms 
were to be in secret, that God, and only God, should openly 
reward them. Treasure was not to be laid up on earth, 
lest men's hearts should tend earthward to their treasure, 
instead of heavenward to God. No anxiety was to be had 
for subsistence, because God supplies it to men as to 
birds. The strait gate was to be sought, not because it 
was open to all, but because it was narrow and obscure, 
and only a few intense strivers would ever be able to find 
it. This disposition of Jesus to confirm and illustrate all 
his ethical precepts, by a reason based upon the absolute 
verities of the universe, may fairly be assumed as the 
characteristic of his mind and the peculiarity of his ethi- 
cal system. 11 

Why, then, may we not adopt his own generalizations, 
and deduce his moral system from his own accredited 
words ? Because we are perplexed by the inconsequen- 
tial and contradictory character of these generalizations. 
A few of the more striking instances will justify this 
assertion. 

Jesus had enunciated the doctrine that enemies were 
to be loved, that blessing was the due return for cursing, 
and kind wishes and prayers for cruel usage, because, in 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 129 

that high strain of perfect love, men put on a likeness to 
the heavenly Father, whose equal gifts of light and rain 
to good and evil expressed his equal love to all, not less 
to the disobedient than to the obedient. 11 When asked 
afterward how many times an injury was to be forgiven — 
a real and intentional, injury being referred to — and if 
seven times would meet his requirement, he promptly 
answered, Forgive seventy times seven, — that is, indefi- 
nitely. 1 ' And this men are to do, because God does it. 
Plainly, this generalization implies that God forgives 
wicked men even, and not only forgives, but blesses 
them. But later, in the same conversation, Jesus de- 
clares that his heavenly Father will say in some near 
future day to many who had prayed to him, and in some 
way derived power to work miracles in his name : Depart 
from me, workers of evil, — a sentence which he after- 
ward supplemented with the indication of the place of 
their departure — into everlasting fire prepared for the 
devil and his angels. d 

Indeed, this forgiving and universally blessing Deity of 
the Sermon on the Mount is not the permanent concep- 
tion of Deity which Jesus dwells upon. Much oftener, 
particularly in the later part of his career, God is pre- 
sented as a being to be feared, because he can destroy 
soul and body in hell. 6 Indeed, taking the whole thought 
of Jesus and attempting to reconcile the being, who is 
imitated by rendering blessing for cursing and good for 
evil, with the being who says : Depart, ye accursed, into 
everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels, we 
find a suggestion in the words of Jesus himself, which 
gives something like consistency to his conception. In one 
of his parables, he represented good and evil men under 
the figure of wheat and weeds growing together in a field. 
When it was proposed to root up the weeds, that was for- 
bidden, lest the wheat should suffer. The forbearance 
with the weeds was not at all on their account ; for after- 
ward, as soon as they could be separated, they were mer- 
cilessly burned. So, Jesus affirmed, should it be at the 
end of the worldly order and the beginning of the heav- 
enly/ The unjust then have the rain and the sunshine, 

"Matt, v., is, 16. h Matt, xviii., 21, 22. c Matt, vii., 22. d Matt, xxv., (o. 

• I, nice xii., 5. f Matt, xiii., 24-30, 36-43. 



I30 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

because, being with the just, they cannot be prevented 
from participating in a good condition designed only for 
the latter. But that very incongruity demands a separa- 
tion, so that the evil shall receive, not sunshine and rain, 
but fire and the outer darkness, which is their fitting 
allotment. 

The Christian ages, reverencing Jesus as divine, and 
accepting as absolute truth all he is believed to have said, 
have been seriously perplexed by this twofold presentation 
of the divine character, as something to be imitated. 
Must we imitate the heavenly Father returning good for 
evil, or returning evil for evil ? or imitate him in return- 
ing good for evil for a time, and indemnify ourselves 
afterward by the completeness and excess of our ven- 
geance? One order of souls, endowed with natural pity, 
have, in all ages, learned the earlier lesson. Another 
order, in whom the sentiment of justice overweighed 
natural pity, have insisted that evil-doing shall be rig- 
orously punished. It can hardly be claimed that the 
humane instincts of mankind have been, on the whole, 
stimulated in the direction of mercy and beneficence by 
the whole doctrine of Jesus, or that they who have 
deferred specially to his authority have been distin- 
guished among mankind for the mildness of their meth- . 
ods with offenders against the social order of the world. 

To take another example. Jesus, in enjoining secrecy 
and brevity in prayer, had declared, as if from an intimate 
knowledge of the Deity, that he knew already what men 
needed, and so was not informed or influenced by much 
speaking. 11 But, later, he declared that men ought to 
importune God for what they needed ; and that, though 
he would not grant their requests to their necessities, of 
which he had knowledge, or from his benevolence, he 
would grant them, to rid himself of the annoyance of 
their persistency. 1 ' Wherever a low and a lofty concep- 
tion of the divine character is presented to the immature 
minds of men, it is not surprising that they should seize 
and appropriate the former. So we see that it was the 
anthropomorphic idea of a God capable of being wearied 
by much speaking, rather than the more dignified idea of 
a God knowing beforehand the wants of men, and giving 

» Matt, vi., 5-7. 1' Luke xi., 5-8; xvii., 1-8. 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS I3I 

heed to their prayers on the side of his affection and pity, 
as expressions of their confidence and piety, that has de- 
termined the devotional practice of Christendom. For 
the liturgies of every form of Christian worship have ever 
abounded in much speaking. Repetitions, the wearying 
power of which upon God can only be judged by their 
wearying effect upon the men that listen to them, form 
the body of prayers, so long and so often repeated, that 
to recite them has demanded a special order of function- 
aries, and fairly furnished them with regular employment. 

Let us consider, as an instance of inconsequential gen- 
eralization, the direction about the secrecy of alms and 
prayer. If men prayed in secret, Jesus affirmed God 
would reward them openly. 11 Why openly, and why 
reward? Is prayer, then, a grateful homage to the Deity, 
for which, as a courteous return, some reward is due ? 

Jesus also said, If we forgive not the person who has 
wronged us, neither will God forgive us for wrongs done 
toward him. b This thought he afterward elaborated in 
a parable, in which a certain master released a heavy 
debt to his servant, because he was poor. But, learning 
afterward that his released debtor had exacted by impris- 
onment a small debt due from a fellow-servant, he was 
angry, and ordered his debtor to the torture till he should 
pay the last farthing. " So," added Jesus to the parable, 
"likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if 
ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother 
their trespasses." c 

Does God then render evil for evil, when men do like- 
wise ? Is his beneficence caprice or character ? Does 
it not degrade God to think of him, whose perfection 
all rational souls are to imitate, as an imitator of the 
cruelty of the evil, and as delighting in the severity with 
which he can surpass them in retaliation? Jesus had 
declared that it was a small effort of the soul to love only 
them that loved us, to salute those who saluted us. The 
publicans even, men who made no pretensions to a high 
grade of nobleness, could do as much as that ; d but, to 
be perfect like the heavenly Father, we must love those 
who do not love us, we must forgive the trespasses of 

"Matt. VI., '>. '"Matt, vi., 15. « Matt, xviii., 25-35. 

J Matt, v., 46. 



132 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

those who do not forgive our trespasses, nor those of our 
fellow-men. 

There is an immense challenge to the spirit of man in 
this imitation of God in the perfectness of love. Jesus 
never spake anything so far-reaching in its implications. 
Christianity does not contain an idea so sublime. But 
the older conception fairly crowded it out, even, of the 
poetic mind that uttered it. The older conception was, 
" Vengeance is mine, I will repay! '" Not that vengeance 
is not due and is not to be taken, but that it is to be 
waited for at the hands of its lawful minister, who only 
can make it summary and effectual. So the world, stirred 
for a moment by the daring presumption, that by a com- 
plete forgiveness it can imitate God, recoils from the 
splendor which opens before it, and, while uttering an 
earlier and lower inspiration, comes to believe that, in 
the vengeance with which it punishes and retaliates the 
trespasses of evil-doers, it is itself forgiving, while acting 
as the minister of a heavenly Father who will not forgive 
the unforgiving. 

In no part of the study here undertaken is the tempta- 
tion stronger to repudiate the statement of general prin- 
ciples as given in -the gospel narratives. The writers of 
those narratives' might perhaps be trusted to give the 
historical incidents of the life of Jesus, they might 
faithfully reproduce his parables and his direct ethical 
precepts ; but, when they undertake to disclose his philos- 
ophy, the primal ideas upon which he based his ethical 
precepts, there, if anywhere, their acknowledged inca- 
pacity to comprehend him would be most likely to mislead 
them. All, therefore, already said, or that may be said, 
in criticism of this underlying philosophy of the Great 
Teacher, must be said with modesty, and with the mis- 
giving that the record is not true to the integrity of his 
thought. It can only be insisted, that the method of 
investigation proposed requires just this treatment; and 
that, upon any other assumption than that of the substan- 
tial accuracy of the language imputed in the Synoptic 
Gospels to Jesus, we have no data from which to deter- 
mine his character or his doctrine or, in fact, upon which 
to predicate his historical identity. No other course is 

"Rom. xii. 19; Deut. xxxii., 35. 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 1 33 

then left for the sympathetic critic, who has not come to 
the study under the prepossession of discipleship, but to 
state the ethical ideas of Jesus as nearly as possible in 
his own words, as historic tradition gives them, modified, 
limited, or contradicted only by himself. 

Such of the precepts of Jesus as related to poverty and 
non-resistance have already been elaborated in a previous 
chapter as coming under the category of political ideas, 
though they have an intimate relation with the specific 
subject of the present chapter. 

Jesus affirmed also that a state of sorrow was a blessed 
and wholesome condition. Blessed, he said, are they that 
mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are ye that 
weep now, for ye shall laugh. Woe unto ye that laugh 
now ! for ye shall mourn and weep. a Undoubtedly, the 
ministry of sorrow, if not too long and hopeless, is salu- 
tary to the soul. It chastens pride ; it moderates desire ; 
it abates the standard of enjoyment to the measure of a 
rational contentment ; it disciplines and refines the pas- 
sionate instincts of the heart ; it gives entrance into the 
deeper secrets of the moral and spiritual life, by making 
the sufferer a participator in the higher experiences of 
his race, since it is mainly by suffering, and the striving 
which it stimulates, that human nature has passed upward 
from bestial conditions and satisfactions to the realms of 
pure thought and spiritual power. Since the whole sen- 
tient world has for all the ages lain, and still lies, under 
the shadow and discipline of sorrow, Jesus spake no word 
that has thrilled more deeply the universal human heart ; 
and this tone, once struck by his gentle touch, vibrates 
through all the Christian ages, its purity and pathos pro- 
longed in echoes that bid fair to outlast the world. Fresh 
as the agony of bereavement, the languor of prolonged 
sickness, the weariness of imprisonment and exile, the 
pang of constantly defeated effort, the long aching that 
comes of monotonous toil or care, is the tonic word that 
even conventional Christianity has not forgotten to repeat 
in its pristine power, " Blessed are they that mourn." 

Not that Jesus believed that sorrow was the normal con- 
dition of the human soul. " For they shall be comforted." 
All sorrow is suffering, and all suffering: is evil. His 



134 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

scheme of compensation embraced a reversal of all condi- 
tions. Just so much joy, so much grief. Those that 
laugh now must weep hereafter, while the weepers shall 
laugh in the assurance that God shall wipe away all tears 
from their eyes ; and there shall be no more death, neither 
sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain : 
for the former things are passed away. - 

In this blessedness of sorrow, in this consecration and 
deification of suffering, made memorable by the pathetic 
story of the cross, and the man of sorrows that agonized 
upon it, we may find the principal power of the religion, 
which has named itself after the name of Jesus. History 
may be said to have disclosed two methods by which 
society has striven to elevate itself and enlarge its capaci- 
ties and achievements. One is the revolutionary method, 
which seeks to ameliorate external conditions, which 
promises to man emancipation from his rulers, more 
rights, larger liberty, greater possessions, and happiness. 
The other may be called the religious method, prominent 
and distinctive in Christianity, but present, too, in the 
great Oriental religions that preceded it, and the secret 
of their success. This method comes to comfort and 
cheer men, not by delusive hopes of escaping the inevi- 
table woes of life, the sufferings out of which man has 
gained his moral nature, but by strengthening him to 
bear them ; and it is on this side, and not on the side 
of its doctrines or disclosures of the fate of men in a 
future life, that Christianity has not only maintained 
itself, but retained the allegiance of the noblest and 
purest minds. 

Jesus pronounced the pitiful blessed.' 1 One of the 
chief accusations he brought against the scribes and 
Pharisees was that they were over-punctilious in bring- 
ing the lesser offerings — mint, anise, and cumin — while 
neglecting to be merciful. The cruel servant, who, in the 
delay of his master's coming, beat his fellow-servant, wa 
cut asunder suddenly by his enraged lord, and consigned 
to a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. d He would 
receive into the blessedness of the Father's kingdom 
those whom, to their modest surprise, he had separated to 
his right hand, because, they have been pitiful to those 

aRev. xxi.,4. l>Matt. v., 7. c Matt, xxiii., 23. '1 Matt, xxiv., 49, 50. 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 1 35 

of his followers who had been sick, poor, and imprisoned/ 1 
He recognized, as modifying the divine justice, the ele- 
ment of mercy, and taught men to pray for the forgive- 
ness of their sins, assuring them that God would forgive, 
at least the forgiving. 1 ' 

He characterized the cultus under which his nation 
had been trained as something radically different from 
this. The old idea had been an eye for an eye and a 
tooth for a tooth ; but his word was : " Resist not evil." c 
But to us, who have the Christian and Hebrew systems in 
their written records, the contrast between them is less 
striking. Along with that characterization of Jehovah as 
a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon 
the children to the third and fourth generation of them 
that hate him, which is an original commentary upon one 
of the ten commandments, is the converse declaration, — 
showing mercy unto thousands of them that love him and 
keep his commandments. 11 The pity of the Deity is as 
emphatically expressed in the Old, as in the New Testa- 
ment, and it is in the former that we find that touching 
expression of the kindness of God, "As a father pitietJi 
his children, so the Lord pitietJi them that fear him"* The 
old idea was that the jealous God, visiting iniquity with 
punishment, involving the children and grandchildren 
of the wrong-doer, pitied and forgave those who feared 
him. And this substantially is the idea of Jesus, who 
declared with severity : " If ye forgive not men their tres- 
passes, neither will your heavenly Father forgive your 
trespasses." f 

Purity of heart, according to Jesus, brings man to the 
consciousness of the divine presence ; and in this idea we 
come to a feature of Christian ethics in sharp contrast 
with the cultus that had preceded, and in advance of the 
moral standard of modern civilization. The older religion 
of the Jews had introduced the Deity as pronouncing a 
blessing upon the reproductive function. The first coun- 
sel, according to its teaching, given to the newly created 
man was : L ' "Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the 
earth." A marriage barren of offspring was regarded as 
a token of the disfavor of God, to be averted by prayers 

'Matt, xxv., 33, 34. ''Matt, vi., 14, 15. cMatt. v., 38, 39. «1 Ex. xx., 5, '.. 
• Ps. ciii., 13. ' Matt, vi., 15. BGen. 1., 38 



I36 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

and sacrifices; while children swarming around the family 
table were considered olive branches, alike the ornament 
of human life and the pledge of the loving partiality of 
Jehovah. The word of Jesus was : He that looketh upon 
a woman to desire her hath committed adultery with her 
in his heart. a He said the only defilement of which a 
man was capable was the defilement of adulterous and 
wicked thoughts. 11 The natural affections, out of which 
the relations of the sexes grow, were to be repressed as 
sins. To the plea that they are human and assert them- 
selves with the sanction and strength of nature, he said : 
Well, then, extirpate nature itself. If thine eye offend 
thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. It is better to 
enter into life one-eyed than, having two eyes, to be cast 
into hell. He commended those, who, for the sake of 
the kingdom of heaven, had applied to themselves this 
process of extirpation, and declared that, in the new and 
heavenly order which he was about to introduce, human 
beings would be like the angels, and neither married nor 
were given in marriage. This declaration had no force 
to meet the dilemma of the woman who in her human life 
had had in succession seven lawful husbands, if it did not 
imply that in the resurrection state not only no new mar- 
riages are contracted, but all pre-existing marriages, with 
all the special relation and affection which belong to 
them, are ignored and blotted out. In strict conformity 
to these ascetic ideas, he himself, though of a tender 
and affectionate disposition, which attracted to him the 
companionship and confidence of women, never in word 
or action indicated that the kinship of marriage was 
compatible with his modes of thought and feeling. 

Jesus went no further than to affirm that sexual desire 
was inherently evil, and that sexual relations did not 
belong to the perfect man. He recognized marriage as 
a condition of the earthly, human life; and, while chal- 
lenging those, who would be perfect, to celibacy in thought 
and life, he only stipulated that those who married should 
not be divorced for other cause than fornication. 

Historic Christianity has been, on the whole, faithful 
to the principles of Jesus in this department of nature, 

aMatt. v., 28-30. bMatt. *\'-> ", 1S-20; xxii., 29, 30; xix., 10-12. 

cMatt. xix., 9. 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 1 37 

although stopping far short of his ideal. Out of his pure 
precepts have grown monogamy, and a resolute opposi- 
tion to divorce, which fairly distinguish the Christian 
ages and races, as well as that proscribed celibacy,, for 
those who are the recognized teachers and exemplars of 
religion, and the general honor in which absolute chastity 
is universally held. Against monastic vows and the prac- 
tice of celibacy, mainly perpetuated by a large body of 
men and women who have inherited the singular purity 
of Jesus, there have been many powerful protests and 
reactions. Mohammed, exhibiting in himself that by no 
means unusual blending of the sensual and devout — a 
type highly favorable to poetic susceptibility and power, 
like what was exhibited in Israel's favorite king — gave 
to his disciples an ideal of a kingdom of heaven as un- 
like as possible to the state in which they neither marry 
nor are given in marriage. The completeness with which 
his lower ideas supplanted those of Jesus in the very 
countries to which his gospel came, and by which it was 
first received, shows how much more thoroughly human 
Mohammed was than Jesus, and how much better he 
understood the capacities and tendencies of the Semitic 
races. 

The same reversion to primitive and natural notions, 
the same reactionary resentment of the rigorous yoke, 
which Jesus endeavored to throw upon animal instincts, 
reappears in Mormonism, and in those groups of eccentric 
Christians, who in communities have sought to combine 
a recognition of the supremacy of right, with the recogni- 
tion of such law as human nature discloses. 

When it is thoughtfully considered how much social 
misery and personal degradation have grown out of the 
ill-regulated appetites of man, and that his superiority 
over the beasts, and over the savage types of mankind, 
from which he has progressed, consists mainly in the 
moral power he has gained by imposing restraint upon 
instincts before which they are helpless, it cannot be de- 
nied that Jesus was profoundly right in what he believed 
Lught ; and that the heavenly order, if not to be 
reached by the rapid :inc\ summary transformation, which 
he anticipated, is only to be attained by the daring of self- 
denial and sacrifice, rather than by the effeminacy of in- 



I 3 S OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

diligence ; and that all schemes of social regeneration are 
but steps downward, and in the direction of degradation, 
that do not propose for individual man a higher law of 
purity. 

Still, Jesus is not to be considered as an ascetic. He 
went to feasts, and never seemed to have annoyed his en- 
tertainers with scruples either of appetite or conscience 
as to his entertainment. 11 It is fairly inferrible that the 
rule he gave his disciples was the one that regulated his 
own conduct as a guest. He told them to tarry at the 
houses, to which they might be invited, eating and drink- 
ing such things as were set before them. 1 ' John's Gospel, 
to which we do not have recourse for authentic history, 
tells of him that at a marriage feast where he was pres- 
ent, when the wine failed, rather than have the harmless 
hilarity suspended, he miraculously produced wine of 
a quality and quantity which more than met the demands 
of the occasion." The story would not have been told, if 
scruples on his part about wine-drinking itself had ob- 
tained any currency in his times. Indeed, his habits and 
principles upon this point are fairly disclosed by his own 
authentic declaration that, whereas John's asceticism had 
fallen on that age like the lamentation of a mourner, his 
own liberal manners were as merry as the notes of a piper. 
He did not resent, or declare libellous, the saying of his 
countrymen, which he himself reported, that he had come 
eating and drinking like a gluttonous man and a wine- 
bibber. The wisdom of his free living and of John's ab- 
stemiousness, however, he said, the wise would know how 
to appreciate.' 1 

Two forms of sensuality have infested and degraded 
humanity, the one leading to drunkenness, the other to 
licentiousness. The religion taught by Mohammed seems 
to have set for itself the task of eradicating the former, 
while tolerant of the latter. The religion inspired by 
Jesus turned its pure eye in stern reprobation of sexual 
desire, while it chose as the emblem of its saving grace, 
the instrument of its only distinctive ceremony, the liquor 
which Islam proscribed as accursed, and' which has been 
in all ages the principal stimulant of intoxication. Alco- 

"Matt. xi., 19; Luke xi., 37 ; xiv., s. I'l.u'. 

cjohn ii., 1-11. 'l.M;itt. xi. , 16 19. 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 1 39 

holic drunkenness has ever been the moral stain and weak- 
ness of the Christian peoples ; and, when the danger and 
misery which it wrought came to be appreciated by the 
awakened humane sentiment of a recent age, good men 
were perplexed to find how equivocal were the teachings 
of the Christian scriptures upon the subject, and how 
little sanction for total abstinence was furnished in the 
example of the founder of Christianity himself. 

Fairly to present the ethics of Jesus in reference to the 
purity which he practised and blessed, it must be said 
that he disclosed it rather as an ideal than a practical at- 
tainment. He challenged men to follow him in a strain 
of virtue that he admitted to be beyond the attainment 
of all but the loftiest spirits. 1 ' Paul, who came after him, 
may be said to have supplemented his delicacy with 
plainer speech, to have accommodated the ideal virtue of 
his master more nearly to the decent practices of civilized 
society, and to have found in the permitted order of the 
world a place for an instinct, which, according to Jesus, 
obscured in the soul of man the vision of God. If it be 
said that the faith of Mohammed was more powerful in 
countries over which it prevailed in repressing drunken- 
ness, than the faith of Jesus has been in Christendom to 
repress licentiousness, let it be remembered that drunk- 
enness is an invention of a comparatively recent civiliza- 
tion, while the sexual appetite springs from the methods 
of human existence, and strengthens itself by relations 
with the whole progress of animal life. Let it be remem- 
bered, too, how much the ideal purity, which Jesus en- 
joined and exemplified, has clone, through the centuries 
sin :e he lived, to exalt the sentiment of human love, and 
to introduce into the social relations of men the chaste 
satisfactions of an angelic state. 

In considering offences against persons, Jesus thought 
the proscribing of murder exceedingly inadequate and 
elementary. He disdained to enumerate the minor 
violences of mutilating, wounding, and beating, and every 
form of bodily harm or manual assault, and passed at 
once to combat the causeless resentments out of which 
all injuries flow. Whosoever is angry with his brother 
without a cause is in peril as a wrong-doer. If he ad- 



I4O OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

dresses him in terms of contempt, he is advanced a grade 
deeper in guilt and danger ; and, if he insults him with the 
epithet thou fool, he is in danger of hell fire. a 

It is not to be concluded that Jesus intended to con- 
demn natural anger, and the just resentment that acts 
of cruelty or of treachery excite in all sensitive minds. 
He himself, as might have been supposed from the 
delicacy of his mental organization, was strongly suscep- 
tible to anger; and several instances are related when he 
gave his resentment expression. 1 ' While acknowledging 
that anger degrades and exposes the soul, and holding 
up self-control as the true law of blameless conduct, the 
difficulty has always been, in the sudden access of anger, 
to measure dispassionately the injury that provoked it. 
But meantime, while the judgment of reason is disturbed 
or overthrown, the act of retaliation has been done, the 
bitter, biting reproach has been hurled, and the enemy, 
who might have been conciliated and made magnanimous 
by love and forgiveness, has been provoked to a fresh 
aggression. Or, if the overt act or word has been sup- 
pressed by a supreme effort of patience or for want of 
opportunity, the pent-up anger, which utterance might 
have relieved, remains to torture and depress the soul, 
and shut out from it all the serene influences of virtue. 

Jesus himself was not aware how hard he might find it, 
with his delicate and sensitive spirit, to bear the contra- 
dictions and malicious suspicions of those who took 
offence at him, and the stupid misapprehensions of those 
who thought they loved and understood him. We are 
compelled to adopt an explanation of his language that 
shall exclude the scribes and the Pharisees and all evil 
and indifferent persons from the category of kindness and 
forgiveness, and to say that Jesus forbids anger and oppro- 
brious epithets only toward brothers, the brothers of natu- 
ral kinship or the brothers of our faith and school ; or else 
to conclude that, when he said afterward of the scribes 
and Pharisees that they were a generation of vipers who 
could not escape the damnation of hell, he was not mani- 

a Matt, v., »j-a6. 

bMark iii.,5; Matt, xii., 27, 32,34»39; xiii., 15; xv., 1-20; xvi., 1,4,6, 12..- 
17; xxi., 19. 
c Matt, xxiii. 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 141 

festing the spirit of the Highest, who is kind unto the 
unthankful and the evil, nor conforming to the principle 
of conduct he himself ' prescribed, when he said : "Judge 
not, that ye be not judged ; for with what judgment ye 
judge ye shall be judged." a Even if we restrict to the 
narrow limits of relationship and discipleship the obliga- 
tion of a forgiving love, and so sink the moral standard of 
Jesus far below the best pattern of virtue that older 
philosophers have given, and to which ordinarily good- 
natured men find it not difficult to conform, we cannot 
understand why he should hurl into the little circle of 
the brotherhood itself, and upon the head of the only too 
ardent and enthusiastic Peter, a name of so much more 
evil significance than foot. To call a man a fool is only 
to impute to him some unwisdom, and, unless he is very 
humble, to undermine his self-conceit. To call a man 
Satan is to charge him with hopeless and inveterate evil. 
Later in his experience of mankind, Jesus might have 
learned, from watching his own spirit, how hard is the 
struggle of a virtuous purpose with those defects and 
insanities of the soul, which form types of character 
among mankind, and which are largely the effect of he- 
reditary influence. A man may break away from an old 
external habit, as of drunkenness, gluttony, impure 
speech and action, neglect of worship of God, idleness, 
pursuit of pleasure, wealth, or ambition, without effort 
greatly disproportioned to his moral powers. But to ob- 
literate a subtle envy, to soothe a fierce impatience, to 
counteract a profound melancholy, to combat successfully 
with evil inclinations that he never wittingly cherished, 
the discovery of which in his heart surprises and alarms 
him like the unbidden and unwelcome presence at his 
table of some foul and ghastly shape, to overcome morbid 
moral feelings, which, if he be wise, he finds to be a taint 
of the blood, since he has learned that they marred the 
fine quality of his ancestry, — this # is a more difficult and 
longer task. Reasonably successful is that human life 
which has maintained a fair fight with these tormentors, 
and lessened their power of mischief. Out of the effort 
of virtue comes strength. The heroic man may hope to 
bequeath to posterity along with hereditary tendencies 

"Matt, vii., 1, 2 ; Luke vi., 35; xvi., 23. 



142 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

to evil, the full strength of the protest and resistance he 
has made against them ; and may have the assurance, 
that, what the aroused will resolutely and persistently 
confronts, will at last be conjured from the slowly 
regenerated family of man. 

Jesus enjoined an absolute, unconditional, and universal 
alms-giving. The effect of this practice upon society and 
the maintenance of the political order I have already 
alluded to in a preceding chapter. It remains to consider 
the precept of benevolence and free giving in its ethical 
effect upon the moral character of the giver and of the 
receiver. 

How sweeping and absolute the precepts are, will be 
perceived by recapitulating the familiar words : "Give to 
every man that asketh of thee, and of him that taketh 
away thy goods ask them not again." Do good, and lend, 
hoping for nothing again. Lend to those from whom you 
do not hope to receive. "Give, and it shall be given unto 
you : good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, 
and running over, shall men give into your bosom." a The 
incongruity in the same juxtaposition of this giving to 
those from whom nothing is hoped in return, and giving 
that a fuller measure shall be given back to our bosom, 
seems somewhat difficult of explanation. In both pre- 
cepts, the giving is enjoined for the sake of the reward. 
The reward is made very prominent ; and the giving to 
the generous is distinctly discountenanced, because, when 
they return the donation, we are paid and can hope for 
no reward. It must have been the whole thought of 
Jesus that men should give freely and largely, not to the 
honest and just who would return their gifts, but also to 
the indolent, the thriftless, the dishonest, the fairly appar- 
ent impostor, who would not return, and who was not ex- 
pected, to return the gifts. In the former case, they 
would be rewarded by the bounty of men whose gener- 
osity they appealed to*: in the latter case, they would be 
rewarded by God in the kingdom of heaven. For it 
was a prominent consideration with Jesus that good 
deeds, even prayers, were to be offered, not so much 
from an impulse of feeling, as for the sake of the 
reward. b Indeed, he had given such prominence to this 

a Luke vi., 30, 33-35, 38. b Matt, vi., 1, 6. 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS I43 

consideration that we are not surprised when his disciples 
ask him, and he goes on, with the detail of one careful to 
be complete in his generosity, to tell them, what shall be 
the reward for the ardor of their attachment and the 
losses that had befallen their discipleship. 1 

No precept of Jesus, as has already been attempted to 
be shown, is so inapplicable as this to the maintenance of 
the present order of the world and the natural succession 
of human society. The obvious incompatibility of such 
inconsiderate beneficence with the welfare of mankind, 
with the preservation of the conditions respectively of the 
rich and poor, and with the perpetuation of the human 
race, has justly arrayed in protest against it, not the polit- 
ical powers, not the philosophic unbelief of the world, but 
the whole official sentiment of the organized believers in 
Jesus, at the head of whom stands his greatest disciple 
and apostle, Paul. It is Christianity itself that repudiates 
and protests, against a primary precept of Christ. 

In the expectation of the speedy end of the world, Jesus 
came, and said : Take no thought to make any provision 
for the sustenance of your earthly lives. Give without 
stint or expectation of return to every one that asks of 
you. He that forsaketh not all that he hath cannot be 
my disciple. His followers in a later age, while revering 
his sacred character, while even elevating him in their 
profound regard to the grade of a divine being, yet pre- 
sumed to apply to these directions of their Lord and 
Master, the modifications compelled by the indefinite post- 
ponement of the expectation upon which they were given. 

If the old order is to go on for some centuries and ages, 
it must go on in its old methods, and subject to its old 
laws. God scatters not upon the surface, but here and 
there, in places only accessible to toil and effort, not lav- 
ishly, but in limited supply, the sustenance of all living 
creatures. There are always living creatures enough to 
exhaust this supply. Nay, more, at the gates of life, of all 
life, stand an innumerable crowd of potential creatures, 
watching that limited supply, to see whether their poten- 
tial life can become actual life, who are shut out from 
the crowded tables of God, because there is not room for 
a tenth of them, livery day, the inequality between the 



144 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER 0¥ JESUS 

guests and the supply must be readjusted by the painful 
process of death, and the dismissal of the superfluous. 
You may take your portion of this bounty of nature, and 
appropriate it to the sustenance of your life ; you may 
generously bestow it upon another life and forego your 
own. When, for the mere asking, you take the bread 
that is to sustain your children, and give it to an un- 
known man to sustain his children, what assurance can 
you have that the universe has been enriched, and 
God's grand plans promoted by the gift ? If you leave 
your food to the rats, have you improved the quality of 
life on the globe ? Will the rats imitate in their turn 
your disinterestedness, and bravely choose starvation, 
that the race of ants may thrive and multiply upon their 
charity ? If the ants in their turn, smitten with this fan- 
tastic politeness, pass the food still lower at the divine 
table, the fungi will revel in it, and build their cells and 
spores out of it, and the glad vegetables suck at its rich 
decay with eager throats. The struggle for life gives life 
to the strongest and the best ; indiscriminate alms gives 
life to the weakest and the worst. 

There is a sphere for pity and fellow-help, everywhere 
more and more recognized by the expanding benevolence 
of men. The patient workers who, by some natural ca- 
lamity or political revolution, or the fraud or violence of 
others, have lost the wages of their toil, must be helped 
by the strong and the successful ; but giving must be dis- 
criminate, and upon some better claim than want or the 
importunity of asking. "It is not meet to take the 
children's bread, and to cast it to dogs," was a later saying 
of Jesus, when dogs signified an alien race of men." It is 
not meet to take what one man has saved by denying his 
lusts and laid in store to feed children that will inherit 
his chaste and temperate nature, and give it to another 
man to expend in gratifying his lusts, or to sustain a 
progeny that will perpetuate his sensuality. Strip life of 
its primal condition of labor and patience and self-denial, 
by which the spirit is chiefly strengthened and chastened, 
and "give to every one that asketh of thee," and who will 
take the long and thorny road to achievement and self- 
support, when the easy door of charity is open to every 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 145 

one that has speech or gesture by which to beg ? You 
destroy character, fatally and fast, at both ends of the 
process ; and such a charity is least like that which 
blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 

Is the rule for all ? Then, if I give to-day all my store 
because my neighbor asked it, must he not to-morrow 
give it back to my asking ? We have not increased the 
store by bandying it back and forth in a vain effort to 
make what was provision for one suffice for two, and have 
lost all the time not expended upon one side or the 
other in adding to the store itself. 

It is easy to see that, given the necessity of labor to 
produce wealth, that is not only the justest but the most 
economic distribution of wealth which gives the property 
produced to the producer, and that this law of distribu- 
tion most favorably affects the moral development of 
individual men. 

Looking into any code of criminal law or into any com- 
plete treatise upon ethical science, we note how large a 
place laws in support of the rights of property occupy. 
That part of the Jewish law which was considered distinct- 
ively moral — the ten commandments of the Old Scriptures 
— was nearly all of it in defence of the right of property. 
Thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not 
falsely testify against thy neighbor, are all prohibitions 
against invasion of property. Adultery was forbidden 
more in the interest of the right of the neighbor to the 
exclusive society of his wife, than in the interest of per- 
sonal purity. In perfect accord with the ideas of Jesus 
about property, which have been fully considered in 
another chapter, he ignores the whole subject of these 
property regulations ; and, in giving the law of adultery, 
gives that new statement of it, which regards the very 
aspect of the offence, which they of old time had wholly 
overlooked. How could he, even by indirection, give the 
sanction of his voice to that prevalent passion for posses- 
sions, which the whole Hebrew cultus stimulated and 
sanctified ? It was at that very point that he antag- 
onized the old ideas, and sought to introduce the new. 
So we find no prohibition against theft or false testi- 
mony or fraud. "Who made me a judge or divider over 
you?" he said impatiently." Give way to the oppressor 

" T.uku xii., 14. 



I46 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

and the robber. If a man has relieved thee of thy pos- 
session, he has done thee no real disservice, but has 
opened for thee the door of the kingdom of heaven, into 
which he that hath riches can only enter by a possibility 
of which only God has knowledge.' 1 

Thus far, the teachings of Jesus have been studied in 
the department of what may be called' the major morals — 
that sphere of human conduct, where men are accredited 
as good or evil, as virtuous or vicious, in the judgment 
of the general human reason. The discussion must be 
pursued into' the department of minor morals, — to those 
lines of conduct, where the sentiment of the world has 
uttered itself in a more uncertain way, — in fine, to those 
modes of action which belong rather to manners than to 
morals, and over which preside good taste and the sense 
of propriety rather than the paramount obligations of 
duty. Very confused must be the ideas of that mind 
which estimates the malicious murder of a man, as of the 
same turpitude with a profane or superfluous speech ; 
which places in the same category of guilt the fraudulent 
breach of a public trust, and the profanation of a holy 
day ; and thinks it as wrong to assume the obligation 
of an oath, as to tell a lie. It is with a different standard 
of moral valuation distinctly in view that the remaining 
ethical theses of Jesus must be considered. 

He said oaths were not to be taken, either to fortify 
the will in performing some definite purpose, or to 
strengthen the truthfulness of some consequential, delib- 
erate and official statement, or to give undue vehemence 
and emphasis to ordinary conversation. He swept away, 
with that integrity of application, which characterized 
his ordinary dealing with a rule or principle of conduct, 
the vow, which in earlier times formed so large and 
solemn a feature of the intercourse of men with the 
divine powers, the judicial oath, that enters so largely 
into all modern official procedure, and every form of 
rhetorical or vulgar exaggeration, that deforms and dis- 
torts literary expression and colloquial speech. He said 
it made no difference whether the oath or imprecation 
was to God, or heaven, or earth, or a man's own head ; 
any invocation, anything beyond a simple assertion or 

» Matt, xix., 23-26. 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS I47 

denial, came of evil. a Certainly, Jesus never said any- 
thing that was characterized with more thorough good 
sense, or more clearly disclosed a wise man's perception 
of the laws of the human mind, than these words. One 
is strongly moved to defend their sagacity and propriety 
against a disregard of them by the Christian world which 
seems almost contemptuous. For it is undoubtedly true 
that the use of oaths in judicial proceedings, and to 
sanction and strengthen the obligation of official trusts 
and official declarations, is chiefly due, not only to the 
religious sentiment in men, but to that type of religious 
sentiment which is distinctively Christian. In pleading 
against the practice of oaths, one must not only ask to 
have the proceedings in which they are used dissociated 
from the sanctions of religion, but that such proceed- 
ings shall be conducted in disregard of an obligation im- 
posed by considerations which Jesus himself especially 
emphasized. It is claimed, against the authority of Jesus, 
that the office of the oath is to put men upon their 
fidelity and conscience, to make them serious and sin- 
cere, to bring into the performance of a human duty the 
consciousness and the law of God. 

The attitude of Jesus toward the Mosaic forms of wor- 
ship has been much discussed. It has been claimed for 
him by many, whose mental portrait of his character is 
drawn from the Christianity of Paul, and from still more 
modern conceptions of its central purpose and spirit, that 
Jesus came as a reformer and protestant against the for- 
mal and outward imposition of sacrifices, fasts, prayers, 
priestly interventions, ceremonies of dress, prescription 
of holy days and of clean and unclean practices, into 
which the simple Jehovah-worship of his nation had de- 
generated in his age. His denunciation of the scribes 
and Pharisees, his disregard of the Sabbaths, the stress 
he laid upon virtue, mercy, and faith, his insisting upon 
pure motive as alone the reality of a pure act, are cited in 
evidence of this protest. 

All these acts and words are quite consistent with a 
decorous conformity to the whole letter and spirit of the 
ecclesiastical law of his time. He declared to John the 
Baptist that it became men who expected the kingdom 

"Matt, v., 33-37. 



14^ OPINION'S AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

of heaven, to fulfil all pious rites. 1 ' He Carefully pro- 
tested, that he had not come to destroy the law or the 
prophets, which would stand and be binding upon the 
human conscience while heaven and earth stood, and 
till they were perfected in his kingdom of the heavens. 
Meantime, he that should break one of the least com- 
mandments of the law, and teach men so, should be the 
least in the kingdom of heaven. h The scribes and Phari- 
sees, he said, sat in Moses' seat, and, whatever they bid, 
men must observe and do. c If he seemed to speak sar- 
castically of the tithes of mint, anise, and cumin which 
they were so careful to pay, he told his disciples they 
ought to do these things also, while not neglecting the 
weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faith.' 1 
His kinsmen and most trusted disciples scrupulously con- 
formed to the ritual of the national worship ; and even 
the erratic Paul, though boasting of the unsectarian spirit, 
— which he had maintained among the Greeks, that he 
might win them to discipleship,^when he came to Jerusa- 
lem, and saw Peter and Jesus' own brother zealously per- 
forming the vows and keeping the fasts and sacred days 
of the Jews, was constrained to succumb to their ex- 
ample. 

All the fundamental ethical precepts of Jesus have thus 
been considered save those, which can be more properly 
viewed as a part of his philosophy, to be discussed in a 
later chapter. They are not comprehensive of the whole 
sphere of human conduct, and there are conspicuous 
omissions in what may be considered the standard of 
the completed man. 

It is already apparent why whole lines of human action 
could not be consistently entertained by Jesus. His 
expectation of the speedy ending of the social and politi- 
cal order necessarily rendered superfluous all political 
duties. Patriotism, bravery in the defence of one's 
country or its institutions, loyalty to the sovereign power, 
whether monarchical or republican, were virtues he dises- 
teemed and ignored. If men learned and practised them, 
it was from other teachers and other inspiration than his ; 
and, while enjoying the consideration and applause they 

a Matt, iii., 15. b Matt, v., 17-20. c Matt, xxiii., 2, 3. 

d Matt, xxiii., 23. ■ Acts xxi., 26. 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS I49 

won from secular minds, it was all the time with the mis- 
giving that they were, in the estimation of Jesus, unsanc- 
tified virtues lightly esteemed of God. In the severe 
judgment of men wholly influenced by his spirit, the 
patriots who have died in defence of their country, the 
heroes who have led suffering and oppressed nations to 
independence and honorable peace, the faithful public 
ministers who have with good counsel and high integrity 
served their rulers or the state, the reformers who by 
their eloquence and constancy have rid the world of 
chronic political abuses, have misdirected their efforts, 
and earned only a pagan glory that will turn to darkness 
before the brightness of the coming of the Son of Man. 

Scarcely less conspicuous is the omission of the 
marital, parental, filial, and fraternal relations of men, 
of the natural affections that pertain to them, and of the 
duties that grow out of them. Jesus was oblivious of 
natural ties. If we are not required to believe that he 
ever addressed his mother as John represents in the story 
of the wedding feast of Cana, a we can find in no part of 
the more reliable records any incident of his tenderness 
and respect for her; and we remember how, on a public 
occasion, he declined to be accosted by his mother and 
brethren, and in the elevation, of his enthusiasm declared 
that he that did the will of God was his brother, sister, and 
mother. 1 ' Half-questioning himself the purity of ties that 
bind the human race in families, and affirming that they 
who would be perfect were not entangled in such ties, 
and that in the kingdom of heaven they are neither mar- 
ried nor given in marriage, how could he follow men into 
such temporary and questionable relations, and fix from 
his high ideal their laws and duties? It was Paul with 
his political training, with his secular spirit, with the feet 
of his common sense firmly planted upon the world, and 
with his determination to make it orderly and decent for 
the brief interval that it should stand, who exhorted hus- 
bands and wives, children and servants, to the practice of 
those virtues that their position demanded, and supple- 
mented the meagre code of his master by a brief sum- 
mary of political duties. It is Paul also who contributes 
to the form of the Christian doctrine nearly all the pre- 

ajohn ii., 1. ''Matt, xii., 48-50. 



150 OPINION'S AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

cepts that it has, regulating the social intercourse of 
men, — all that fine courtesy, that delicacy of mutual con- 
sideration, which is the expression of a refined spirit — 
and which a chivalric nature like his readily takes on, by 
mingling with the morally well-educated. Jesus had said, 
nr atonies. Paul remembered that love was none 
the less due to friends, and gave us that fine precept 
to regulate the social intercourse of equals. " Be kindly 
affectioned one to another with brotherly love, in honor 
preferring one another." " 

The modern mind has no better word than gentleman 
to define its idea of perfected manhood. The idea is a 
composite one, having for its constituents the meekness 
and patience under injuries, the spirit that returns bless- 
ing for curses and offers the other cheek to the smiter, 
which are the inspiration of Jesus, the brotherly courtesy 
which gives the friend the preference of honor enjoined 
by Paul, and what may be called the Teutonic influence — 
that chivalric feeling which accepted the Christian cultus 
with essential modifications. Not abject or insensate 
under the affront of wrong, this chivalric feeling exhibits 
its magnanimity sometimes by the completeness of its 
forgiveness, sometimes by the moderation of its retalia- 
tion, sometimes by waiting for the violent deed to 
recoil of its own force upon the offender. Not hasty or 
vindictive in resenting personal injuries, this feeling 
inspires no restraint upon indignation provoked by attacks 
upon woman, upon children, upon the weak and the 
unfriended, and finds a place for the masculine virtues of 
courage in shielding from wanton cruelty those who 
cannot defend themselves. 

In Egypt and in India there were types of religious 
faith which emphasized the relationship between men and 
the lower order of living creatures. The hunting and 
slaying of animals endowed with strength, cunning, or 
swiftness to stand at bay, or flee, or hide, while it gave 
the barbarous man a keen delight, ministered to the 
development of his cruel instincts, and kept him closely 
akin to the beasts he pursued. Even the more decent 
practices of civilization, that localize, specialize, and cover 
up the slaughters that inaugurate our feasts, leave us 

■ Romans xii., 10. 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 151 

compromised with the reproach that our lives are largely 
supported by the violent and premature deaths of sen- 
tient creatures, whose rank in the order of nature below 
our own may have been fixed only by our own conceit. 

The Israelite cherished no sentimental tenderness 
toward the lower animals. He honored the dumb races 
only by eating them, and looked with aversion upon 
those he deemed unclean, — that is, unfit for food. The 
aversion to dogs, which appears in the older and later 
literature of that people, is one entirely in keeping with 
a national trait, which is scarcely intelligible to those 
more sympathetic races who have made that sagacious 
and affectionate creature the companion of their toils 
and their pleasures. Jesus spake of the animals some- 
times, to illustrate his thought, but never in a spirit dis- 
cordant with the national antipathy. He spoke of aliens 
as dogs, and asked, How much better is a man than a 
sheep ? Cast not your pearls before swine, which after 
trampling them will tear you. The legend of the devils 
and the herd of swine is an illustration in part of an unsym- 
pathetic aversion to brutes, in part of a local and partisan 
repugnance to the repulsive diet of an alien race, which 
must have characterized the school of men, who came 
under his special influence. 

Germs of a civil polity for the community of the 
believers appear in Jesus' directions as to the treatment 
of offences by the brethren. His rule seems quite differ- 
ent from that given for offences received from persons 
outside the fellowship of discipleship. In the latter case, 
it was : "Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek 
offer to him the other also." If any man will sue thee 
at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy 
cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a 
mile, go two miles with him." 1 ' For wrongs, affronts, 
and exactions received from ordinary men, from men not 
of your faith, the remedy is silent suffering, the meek 
surrender of yourself to their violence, the wearing out 
of their malice by your patience. But how about offences 
received from those who walk with you in the same 
meekness and blamelessness, — when they happen to give 
offence, what shall we do ? They will not smite again, 

1 Matt v., 39, 40. ''Matt, v., 41. 



152 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

nor exact the cloak or the coat, nor compel us to walk 
even a furlong. The question was asked of Jesus, If my 
brother trespass against me and come with his penitent 
regret, how many times must I forgive him, — seven 
times ? Yes, seventy times, said Jesus. But if he does 
not come to acknowledge his fault or to ask forgiveness? 
Then go to him, said Jesus, and rebuke him. The 
brother must not be left in his sin, as you leave the or- 
dinary man. Rebuke him with privacy. If he is of the 
right spirit, he will see his fault, and you shall have saved 
his soul. But, if he is perverse and obdurate, do not 
give him up. Take one or two more with you, that from 
a disinterested point his offence may be shown him. 
Even if he will not hear the remonstrances of two or 
three, still let the whole brotherhood, the assembly of 
the elect, add their remonstrances ; and, if the offending 
brother is still unmoved, let him be to thee a heathen and 
a publican. Cast him out of the category of discipleship. a 
The necessity for these directions in the personal dis- 
sensions arising among the early Christians, must have 
been very imperative. The inclination is very strong to 
look upon their recapitulation as an interpolation of the 
biographers of Jesus ; but the rule of selection hereto- 
fore adopted compels us to accept these as parts of his 
authentic teaching. The spirit of his followers was not, 
even in the brief period of their personal attendance upon 
him, so completely under his control as to make it im- 
probable, that he was called upon to indicate some rule, 
by which their dissensions among themselves might be 
settled. What surprises us is the absence of reference 
to himself and his authority. If a brother had offended 
a brother, why should not there have been a reference in 
some stage of the attempted reconciliation, to the author- 
ity of the master ? Or did Jesus give this direction late 
in his career, and when, in anticipation of his own de- 
parture, he wished to indicate some tribunal, that would 
remain during the interval of his absence ? That he 
feared some outbreak of a quarrelsome temper among 
his own disciples, in that interval, is evident from his 
caution, But if that servant ''shall begin to smite his fel- 
low-servants and to cat and drink ivith the drunken, the 

: ' Matt, xviii., 1 5- 1 s, 21, 22. 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 1 53 

Lord of that servant shall come in an hour that he think- 
eth not, and shall appoint him his portion with the hypo- 
crites." a 

Out of these few and doubtful words has sprung the 
whole complicated and imposing structure of the Chris- 
tian Church, so terrible in its power and in its punish- 
ments, so minute and universal in its surveillance and 
jurisdiction. These words must be considered doubtful 
because they are so foreign to the general ideas of 
Jesus, that contemplate no organization of believers, 
and nothing like government or discipline, however 
temporary, before the new economy, which was to be 
from heaven, should create a new heaven and a new earth 
for the elect of God. 

The same question occurs in reference to the general 
ethical ideas of Jesus as in reference to his dominant idea 
of the kingdom of heaven, — how far were they his own, 
how far do we find them or germs of them in the times 
that immediately preceded his own ? 

Besides the Pharisees and Sadducees, the two principal 
sects that divided, the Jewish world, there was a smaller 
body of devotees called the Essenes, whose influence 
upon the ethics and practices of Jesus and his followers 
is now generally acknowledged. The origin of this sect 
is lost in obscurity. No distinct traces of them are found 
in the Jewish scriptures. Though thoroughly national in 
their attachment to the Mosaic ritual and in their vivid 
expectation of a Messiah, their manners and morals have 
in them something foreign. Very great must have been 
the germinal power of the doctrine of Sakya Mouni, the 
Hindu reformer, in the first fervor of conversion. We 
know that, besides powerfully affecting India, it spread 
Eastward, and became the dominant faith of China, Japan, 
and Thibet, as well as of many islands of adjoining seas. 
Although kept out of Persia by strong military and eccle- 
siastical authority, it is not impossible, that, the zealous 
propagandists that penetrated every part of Asia, in spite 
of opposition and persecution, might have indoctrinated 
some of the captive communities of Hebrews in exile 
under the Assyrian and Persian kings, and that these 
latter might have brought back to Palestine, along with 

a Matt. xxiv. , .(-'. i , 



154 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

their devotion to Jehovah and their attachment to Jeru- 
salem and its stately worship, some of the ideas of the 
Hindu reformer. The tradition of Jesus is the story of 
a good man, born in a stable, whom the rulers of his 
nation had persecuted and crucified, but who through the 
power of God had risen from the dead, shown himself' to 
his disciples and ascended to heaven. Belief in this 
tradition gave wings to the ideas and doctrines of Chris- 
tianity, and set them flying over the world. It was the 
equally touching and romantic legend of a man born a 
wealthy and powerful prince, who was so deeply moved 
by the sufferings of the poor and the miseries that em- 
bittered human life, that he voluntarily laid aside his 
royal state, and in toil, poverty, and privation spent his 
life in alleviating the sufferings of the wretched, till in 
his old age he was rewarded with the supreme bliss of 
heaven, that sent a new faith — singularly destitute of 
promise or satisfaction to the human heart — buoyed up 
by the enthusiasm and martyrdom of its converts over 
two-thirds of habitable Asia. 

Many scholars, however, insist that' Essenism was an 
essentially national development, natural enough among 
a people whose genius was religion ; and that the sect, 
which obtained notice from the writers of the first cen- 
tury, was a sect of the Pharisees — a later development of 
the devout and ascetic feeling, which tinged the character 
of several of the Hebrew prophets, and which was mani- 
fested in the orders of the Nazarites, Reccabites, and 
Chassidim of the ante-christian period. 

From the distinct pictures of Essenism found in the 
works of Philo, Josephus, and other writers, it is easy to 
determine how much it contributed to the ethical system 
and to the philosophical ideas of Jesus. 

The Essenes had a great reverence for the old script- 
ures, and were most strict in their observance of the 
Sabbath. It has been seen that Jesus read and quoted 
the Hebrew scriptures, and was evidently very familiar 
with them. He also persistently maintained that he had 
not come to destroy the least tittle of the law, and 
exhorted his disciples to do whatever the scribes and 
Pharisees taught or required as observances and cere- 
monies of worship. But he evidently anticipated that his 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 1 55 

teaching would be supposed antagonistic to the Mosaic 
code ; and spoke of its most fundamental prohibitions, as 
of murder, as a tradition of them of old time, and of the 
whole moral law of the ten commandments as wholly 
inadequate to define the character of a righteous man, 
or to form a standard of conduct for the least in the 
kingdom of heaven. His attitude toward the Sabbath 
was unequivocally contemptuous ; a and he asserted his 
personal authority to make the ,day the minister to his 
convenience and necessity. 

The Essenes believed in labor. The community was 
industrial. Industry was as much insisted upon among 
them as devotion. It has already appeared that Jesus' 
prime direction, Take no thought for yotcr life, abolished 
the incentive of labor ; and that his invitation to his 
hearers was : Leave your toil, your care for subsistence ; 
forsake houses and lands, and come to me, who have not 
where to lay my head, and you shall have rest. 

The Essenes insisted upon strict justice to all men 
and faithful obedience to rulers. In Jesus, as has been 
shown, the sentiment of justice was feeble. He thought 
it a small matter, not worthy his interference or even 
rebuke, that a man should defraud his brother of an 
inheritance. His attitude toward rulers was equivocal. 
He paid taxes, while protesting that they were an unwar- 
rantable exaction, because he would not offend. He 
thought Caesar's coin, which an inheritor of the kingdom 
had no business to possess, and must give to the asker, 
might be given to Caesar. But he nowhere helped the 
secular arm by the sanction of voice or act, and gave no 
exhortation to his followers which indicated, that he held 
what the Essenes held, and what Paul so emphatically 
taught, that the rulers held their power as the ministers 
of God. b To him, they were the wolves who would con- 
spire to shed his blood; and who after his death would 
,c the flock of which he was the shepherd. 

The Essenes discountenanced association with the 
wicked, and formed a separate community to avoid con- 
tact with the unclean. Jesus promulgated a higher prin- 
ciple. He held no man ceremonially unclean. To him 
the only defilement was the defilement of a wicked dis- 



I56 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

position, and he did not sever himself from evil men. 
He obtained the reputation of associating with the pub- 
lican and the harlot, the extortioner and the sensualist, 
the two types of evil of his time ; and several of his most 
pronounced disciples were gained from these classes. 
Strong in his own integrity, he did not seem to have 
thought it necessary to impose upon weaker and baser 
natures a constraint and segregation, that might become 
necessary to maintain their feeble virtue. 

The Essenes had substituted prayers for sacrifices. 
Jesus clearly taught that men were to ask freely and 
simply for whatever they needed ; but he is not to be 
considered as insisting much upon prayer, and never as 
insisting upon it as an act of worship or expression of 
allegiance towards the Deity. When ye pray, he says to 
his disciples, Enter into your closet, — that is, if you pray, 
pray only thus ; just as he had said, When thou fastest, 
anoint thy head and wash thy face. In neither case did 
he command men to fast or to pray. ;1 Indeed, it appears 
that, up to a certain period of his teaching, he had not 
taught his disciples to pray ; and that they reminded him 
of an omission in his doctrine by citing the example of 
John the Baptist. b In the sense of asking of God any 
good gift, Jesus taught that his disciples should have 
frank, open, and frequent access to the heavenly Father ; 
but that God is not to be annoyed with repetitions. He 
knows what men want before they ask him ; and prayer 
is never to be used ostentatiously, as an edifying exhibi- 
tion of devoutness, or to impress others as a manifesta- 
tion of piety. Jesus spoke of the long prayers of the 
Pharisees — probably much shorter than the modern 
Christian prayer of our public worship — as a pretext 
for extortion. 

The Essenes believed in bodily washings and baptism. 
Jesus seemed to have apologized for being himself bap- 
tized ; (1 and there was some disfavor in his mind to the 
rite, which confirms the saying in the Johannic narrative, 
that Jesus left all the baptizing to his disciples, and may 
have suggested Paul's boast, that he never baptized but 
a single family/ The saying of Jesus, that not eating 

<» Matt, vi., 3, 5-7. 1> Luke xi., 1. c Matt, xxiii., 14. 

dMatt. iii., 15. ejohn iv., 2. f I. Cor. i., 14-17. 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 157 

with unbaptized hands, but wicked and lustful thoughts, 
worked real defilement, 11 harmonizes with this estimate on 
his part of baptism. 

The Essenes gave an emphatic testimony against war 
and slavery. The doctrine of Jesus, that men were to 
suffer with patience and meekness and without retaliation 
all injuries, is the extreme statement of the principle of 
peace; and must be taken as bis rule of conduct not only 
for individuals, but for associations, communities, and na- 
tions. With what view he on one occasion directed his 
followers to arm themselves with swords, it is difficult 
to determine. He evidently contemplated no formidable 
physical demonstration, since, when but two weapons 
could be procured, he declared the armament sufficient ; 
and when the enemies, whose arrival he had every rea- 
son to anticipate, actually appeared, he promptly forbade 
any forcible resistance. Whatever may have been the 
teachings of the apostles or the practice of the earlier 
Christians, the hostility of Jesus to all war and violence 
is clear and unmistakable. With regard to slavery,- in 
his time an established usage of society, practised among 
his own people, his teaching was nearly silent. The 
ideas of brotherhood and equality, which he insisted 
upon as the social condition of the little band of disci- 
ples, his command to them to call no man master and to 
esteem him greatest who did the lowest forms of service, 
utterly excluded from the Church the claim of mastery 
or ownership. The outside world, however, was never 
reproached by him for oppressing, buying and selling 
fellow-men, with anything like the severity with which he 
denounced the merely rich. He never said that, to enter 
into the kingdom of heaven, it is necessary to emancipate 
one's slaves. It was quite consonant with the tolerance 
of slavery on his part for Paul to exhort converted slaves 
to be obedient, even to wicked and cruel masters, and to 
recognize them among the classes, whose duties he pre- 
sented by the side of those of the other social conditions 
— husband and wife, parent and child. 1 ' 

The Essenes cherished a special reverence for age, sup- 
plying to the aged celibates in their communities the 
tender consideration and affection which even children 

"Matt, xv., 20 j Luke xxii., 36. •> Eph. vi., 5, 6; Col. iii., 18-25. 



I5« OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

are not wont to render toward superannuated parents. 
If Jesus taught any similar duty, his biographers have 
made no record of it. That peculiar sect hated every 
form of falsehood, and the speaking of truth under all 
circumstances was enjoined as a most imperative duty. 
Falsehood is the taint of all the decayed and hopeless 
races, the prime badge of their degradation. Cruelty and 
sensuality can be bred out of savage men by the slow 
culture of civilization, but falsehood is a degeneration 
that precedes national extinction. The Jews, who had 
their great law against bearing false testimony against 
the neighbor, had no prohibition against the lie helpful to 
one's neighbor or to one's self. The national character, 
which honored every form of advantageous duplicity, and 
which imputed to Deity itself the deceit of making false 
revelations to ensnare men into punishment, was not 
above the necessity of some new doctrine of truthfulness. 
In the comparatively trivial matter of the indirectness 
and exaggeration of the forms of speech, we are per- 
plexed to miss the requirement of the essential matter, 
that, whatever be the forms, only truth must be spoken. 
Jesus himself indulged in indirectness of speech, and 
avowed the purpose of so uttering his most fundamental 
doctrines, that, all excluded from the knowledge of the 
divine mysteries, might make shipwreck of their faith." 

It may thus be seen in what respects Jesus taught 
either in direct opposition to the principles of the Es- 
senes, or laid little or no stress upon doctrines which to 
them were essential. But, on the other hand, how closely 
he reproduced their ideas may be seen from the following 
recapitulation. 

Like them, he taught that the sexual desires, if not 
absolutely sinful, were indicative of a low stage of virtue, 
and that all who would be perfect, who in purity of heart 
would attain the vision of God, must abstain from mar- 
riage. b It was an Essenic rule that the brotherhood 
must give up their property upon entering their commu- 
nity to be administered for the benefit of the whole, and 
that thereafterward the convert must not lay up any 
treasure for himself. What he had he must give to the 
brother asking for it, expecting nothing again. All traffic 

11 Matt. xiii. , u-15. '' Matt, v., 8, 28, 29; xix., 10-12; xxii., 29-30 



ETHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 1 59 

in the sect itself was unlawful. No man was to be master 
or to be so called. There was no recognized priesthood, 
no external sacrifices, no ritual of worship, other than that 
which every humble believer might practise and conduct. 
Jesus' rule of ecclesiastical discipline, already alluded to, 
of first making a personal appeal to an offending brother, 
then renewing it with the support of one or two associ- 
ates, then submitting it to the assembly of the faithful, 
and if all remonstrances failed to bring the offender to 
penitence, casting him out as a heathen and a publican, 
was the exact regulation of the Essenes. 

They enjoined abstinence from all oaths, and, like 
Jesus, said all speech that exceeded mere denial and 
affirmation came of evil. Though scrupulous in their 
washings and linen clothing as preparations for their 
common meals, considered by them sacraments, they 
required ordinary garments to be worn out before they 
were changed or laid aside. Jesus forbade his disciples 
to provide more than one coat, or one pair of shoes, or 
any money for their journeys. a This, too, was a uniform 
injunction upon the Essenes on similar occasions. Ab- 
staining generally from marriage, they depended, like 
the modern Shakers, upon waifs from other sects, mostly 
children, to keep up their numbers. To these forlorn 
children they were indulgent and affectionate, and were 
wont to say before Jesus repeated it, " Of such is the king- 
dom of heaven y 

The blessing upon meekness, and the characterization 
by Jesus of himself as meek and lowly, though singularly 
undescriptive of the spirit of his later days, was Essenic. 
The Essenes, too, placed love of God before worship and 
sacrifice. Jesus made God dear to the human heart by 
calling Him his, and our Father in heaven, and applauded 
the saying of the wise scribe, who declared that to love 
God with all the heart was better than all whole burnt- 
offerings and sacrifices. It was unlawful among the 
Essenes to promulgate their higher doctrines to persons 
outside the sect ; and, in strict accord with this idea, 
Jesus declared that it was not given to the multitude who 
heard his parables to understand the mysteries of the 
kingdom of heaven, but only to his disciples. The 

"Matt, x., 9, .0 



l60 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Essenes enjoined an excision of anger and malice. Jesus 
declared anger endangered the soul, and that God would 
accept no worship from a heart cherishing malice toward 
a brother. Miracle-working, particularly curing diseased 
persons and casting out devils, power that extended even 
to raising the dead, was a claim of an advanced stage of 
Essenism. It was quite manifest that Jesus could gain 
no high estimate as a prophet and Messiah, until he had 
created for himself a similar prestige. The Essenes 
forbade scientific studies and all irreverent scrutiny 
into the laws of God, as destructive of salutary piety. 
Jesus boasted that not many wise men had been attracted 
by his preaching, only the simple ones and the babes in 
reason and intelligence." The doctrine of the Holy 
Ghost promulgated by Jesus, and which grew into such 
large proportions in the early Church, first appears among 
these forerunners of Christianity. Finally, it was the 
Essenes that, of all the Jews, had chiefly studied the 
Messianic prophecies, kept their promises alive in the 
national heart, and indicated in the Teachings of their 
faith the nearness of the time for their expected fulfil- 
ment. So that when John first, and Jesus afterward, 
began to preach in Palestine, and to say, Repent, for the 
kingdom of heaven is at hand, they threw a spark into the 
vigilant hope of all devout souls which could but kindle 
into a vital and spreading enthusiasm. 

Thus, it is seen that, in his ethical ideas, Jesus accepted 
and repeated the doctrines of a singular sect that he 
seems to have converted and absorbed, — accepted them 
as he had his faith in the coming of the kingdom of 
heaven, not blindly, as a mere convert and copyist, but 
putting his own original genius into them, modifying 
them by his own powerful thought, and giving them the 
wings of his own enthusiasm with which to fly across 
the world and down to the latest centuries. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS. 

" Systems of thought should be studied sympathetically, but critically, — 
from the outside as it were, and never from the stand-point of discipleship. 
Those philosophers who have had no distinct 'school' are best under- 
stood." — From a summary of Wundfs Physiological Psychology in the Nation. 

In a preceding chapter has been stated and illustrated 
the perplexity in which the sympathetic critic is involved 
in attempting to deduce a system of morals, an ethical 
philosophy, from the generalizations with which Jesus is 
reported to have explained his specific precepts relating 
to conduct. The perplexity mainly proceeds from the 
inconsequential and contradictory nature of those gen- 
eralizations. To make the survey of the words and acts 
ascribed to Jesus complete, to embrace in the analysis of 
his character all the data that a reasonably probable 
tradition has supplied, the effort must be made to collect 
the prominent principles of his philosophy. 

If he was an intellectually and spiritually complete 
man, — still more, if he was a being whose traits entitled 
him to a divine rank, — a harmonious conception of nature 
and of its meaning might be expected from him. It 
would be assumed that he had the knowledge of the truth, 
that all his authentic utterances were more or less com- 
plete expositions of a scheme of knowledge absolutely 
infallible. All seeming inconsistencies and errors in the 
words imputed to him would require to be attributed 
either to the incompleteness of his own declaration or to 
the misconception and mistakes of the report. But if it 
be assumed that Jesus was a man, it does not surprise us 
to discover, that he was affected by the beliefs of his age, 
and that his conceptions of nature and its laws were 
limited by the scientific knowledge of his times. It is 
not to be expected of a poetic mind kindled by an enthu- 



102 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

siastic temperament, that it should also be either logical 
or comprehensive. Such intellectual types rarely meet 
in the same individual. 

When, therefore, a chapter is devoted to the philo- 
sophical ideas of Jesus, it is not to be implied that he 
taught a distinctive philosophy, since the tendency of his 
thought seemed to be to discredit all philosophy, and to 
invite men to distrust their critical faculties, and to sur- 
render their minds to the prepossessions of a childlike 
faith. It is rather a concession to our own logical facul- 
ties that can only consider a character or a system, as 
they bring it to the standards of those ideals and axioms, 
which the human understanding has established. When 
a poet, a prophet, a reformer, such as Jesus was, utters 
the vital message which burdens his soul, he thinks of 
some more instantaneous and powerful result than flows 
from any new philosophy. Jesus may never have used 
the words, nor reached the conception expressed by them, 
imputed to him in John's Gospel, — " The words that I 
speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are /ife": a but 
they admirably describe the influence of his teachings 
upon those who listened to him, and which has been 
perpetuated in the report of them. But though he had 
no thought of promulgating a mere system of philosophy, 
and felt the consciousness of a more direct spiritual 
power than such system could have, it is not impossible 
to construct a philosophy more or less complete out of 
the ideas and conceptions his words imply. Meagre and 
unsatisfactory as the data are, this is what the symmet- 
rical portrayal of his character requires to be undertaken. 

Jesus taught in general the Divine beneficence. He 
measured the goodness of God by the standard of good- 
ness in men, and affirmed that, if men who were evil — that 
is, who were unpitying and indifferent and selfish — gave 
out of natural affection to their own children, much more 
God, who is good, pitiful, and self-forgetful, would give 
good things to those who asked him. 1 ' The old Jewish 
scriptures had affirmed the goodness of God, and had 
repeatedly spoken of the relation of God to his chosen 
people, as that of ;i father to his children. Very tenderly, 
too, had they given expression to the paternal affection of 

» John vi., 63. I'Matt. vii., 11; xxiii. , <j. 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 163 

Deity in the saying: " As a father pitieth his children, so 
the Lord pitieth them that fear him." a Still, to the Jewish 
mind, the fatherhood of God ever remained a figure of 
speech. It was never accepted as a real relation, but as 
only an illustration of the divine care and affection. To 
Jesus, it was evidently something more. The fatherhood 
of God to him, if not a physical, was a psychological fact. 
By his spirit, man was veritably a child of God ; and he 
sought to emphasize the relation, and make it displace 
the human relation, which to him seemed only physical 
and secondary. He told his followers explicitly: "Call 
no man your father upon the earth ; for one is your 
Father, which is in heaven." h This was in perfect accord 
with that ignoring of the ties of natural kinship, which 
he expressed in the declaration that, in the kingdom of 
heaven, the marital relation, the foundation of all the 
natural relations, would no longer exist, with the impa- 
tience he exhibited when a man inclined to discipleship 
proposed first to attend his father's funeral/ 1 and with 
his assertion, when on a public occasion his mother 
and brothers desired to speak with him, — "Whosoever 
shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the 
same is my brother and sister and mother." 6 

So far as possible, Jesus evidently wished that the 
affections to spring out of conscious sonship to God 
should take the place of the human affections. His fol- 
lowers were not to be children of their parents, kindred 
of their kinsmen, compatriots of their fellow-countrymen ; 
but children of the Highest and brothers in the faith. 
The new faith was to plough through families, break do- 
mestic ties, and separate mother and daughter ; and a 
man's foes should be they of his own household. 1 ' 

The decorous and conservative Jew shrank from this 
realistic application of a metaphor. While Jesus taught 
his disciples to address the Almighty God as our Father, 
while he endeavored to habituate their thought to the 
relationship as one that was actual and not figurative, 
no offence was taken by the orthodox teachers of 
the old monotheism ; but when Jesus began to speak 

I' <iii., 13. '• Matt, v., .15; xxiii., .,. c Matt, xxii., 30. 
'1 Luke ix., 5<i, 60. cMatt. xii., 50. 

1 Matt, ■•■.. • ; 



164 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

more frequently of God as his father,* and place himself 
in a relation to him superior to that of the prophets, as 
that of the son of the owner of the vineyard, while they 
were the servants," when too, perhaps, his natural birth 
came to be denied by admiring disciples, and his descent 
from the spirit of God came to be told, as it might 
have been in his lifetime, the scribes and Pharisees 
conceived that the pretension had become criminal. 
They sought to make him commit himself explicitly to 
such a pretension ; and, when they had on his trial 
provoked him to reiterate it, they thought they had found 
a sufficient warrant for condemning him as a blasphemer. b 

Jesus taught that the courses of nature are the special 
appointment of God, and that a minute providence en- 
virons the lives of good and pious men. The rain and 
the sunshine, he declared, to be divinely directed ; and 
the fact, that the just and the unjust alike enjoyed them, 
clearly manifested the care and love of God, not only 
for those who loved and worshipped him, but for those 
who hated and neglected him. It is, he said, the heavenly 
Father who feeds the fowls of the air and clothes the 
flowers of the field with beauty, and gives to all men 
what they ask of good things. Not a sparrow falls to the 
ground without the knowledge of the Creator, whose over- 
sight is so minute that he does not suffer a hair to fall 
from the human head without noting and permitting it. c 

These are fragments indeed of casual discourses ; and 
it may not be wholly just to strain to all their logical 
conclusions the breathings of a trustful and sanguine 
spirit, overcharged with the reverence of a paternal God. 
It is legitimate, however, to indicate the corollaries and 
deductions from such inferences of the divine benefi- 
cence and paternity, without imputing the inferences to 
the authority of Jesus. A partial view of nature presents 
certain aspects in harmony with the theory that a benefi- 
cent agency controls it ; and these aspects, seizing hold 
of devout and hopeful minds, lead them to affirm that 

*It may be remarked (hat from the time Jesus disclosed to his followers his purpose to go 
to Jerusalem as the Messiah and son of David, he only twice spoke of God as the father of 
his disciples, though previously to that, in addressing his followers, he had sixteen times 
called the Highest your father. Only live times before that time had he called God his 
father, but thirteen times afterwards. 

a Luke xx., 10-13. b Matt. xxvi., 63-66. c Matt, v., 45; vi., 26-28; Luke xii., 7. 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 165 

nature is good. Sad and despondent men find other 
aspects, which drive them to the conclusion that nature 
is evil. Perhaps a more comprehensive view, from which 
the disturbing influence of personal feeling is carefully 
eliminated, leads to the conclusion that nature — neither 
good nor evil — utterly refuses to be estimated by a 
standard, which a morally trained man has been wont to 
apply to his own conduct. 

We come upon another distinction here, which com- 
pels us to elect between the Johannic narrative and the 
three others in substantial agreement with each other. 
In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus appears as assuming 
that the courses of nature, the general order of the 
world, are directly under the control of God, and that its 
aspects and changes represent and express his benefi- 
cence. In the Johannic Gospel, Jesus is represented 
as invariably surrendering the world to the enemy and 
to malign powers, that administer it antagonistically to 
God. It is therein declared that, though God made the 
world, when Jesus who is the true light came to it, 
the world knew him not." Jesus is made to say that the 
world is under condemnation, and can only be saved by 
faith in himself. 1 ' The world hates him, because he had 
testified to its wickedness. The spirit of truth the 
world, not capable of recognizing, can never receive ; but 
Jesus will manifest himself to his disciples in the world, 
though not to the world.' 1 The prince of the world, the 
ruling power in human society, has nothing in Jesus. 
The world hated Jesus : it will hate all those who abjure 
its spirit for the faith of Jesus.'' But the world is to be 
reproved, and the prince of the world brought to judg- 
ment ; and Jesus will overcome the world.' For the 
world, recognizing its necessary hostility to himself, Jesus 
will not even pray.* In the condemnation in which he 
finds it, he leaves it. It had been said of him by John 
the Baptist, " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away 
the sin of the world ! " h Jesus himself does not so declare 
his mission, — not to take away the sin of the world, he 
says, but to save out of the world, for which he will not 

»Johni., 10, b John iii., 16, 17. ejohnvii.,7. <1 John xiv., 17, 22, 27, 30. 

' John , 18, >')■ ! John xvi., 8-1 1 ; xvii., 6, 9, 14. 

gjohn xvii., 9, 15. h John i., 20. 



l66 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

even pray, those whom the world hate, because they are 
not of it. 

The word "world" is sometimes used in English to de- 
note the earth in its physical condition and under its 
organic laws. The word " nature " fitly embodies the 
idea expressed by it, save that nature, being applicable 
to the whole cosmos, has a wider signification. When so 
used, the world means the earth and its immediate en- 
vironments of sea and atmosphere, together with all the 
living creatures, animate and inanimate, including man, 
belonging to it. But it is proper to use the word "world" 
to denote human society, the temper, influence, and char- 
acter of the men of the world taken in the aggregate. It 
is easy enough to see that the antagonism of the Johannic 
Jesus to the world is not to the courses of nature, but to 
mankind taken in the mass. And yet in the Synoptic 
Gospels, though the implication is always that nature is 
orderly, harmonious, and good, — a manifestation in its 
changes of the beneficence of the Creator, — it is nowhere 
affirmed that human society is naturally and hopelessly 
antagonistic to God. Jesus utters indeed a woe upon the 
world, but only on account of the offences of evil men:' 
The world itself is good, but it will necessarily suffer in 
the punishment of the wicked. 

It is not to be expected that the writers of those nar- 
ratives kept in their minds the distinction between the 
world as nature and the world as society. The critical 
student is able to make the apparent antagonism between 
their conceptions less pronounced, by calling to mind a 
distinction, which it nowhere appears that they were 
careful to make, even if they entertained it. The philo- 
sophic idea underlying the teachings of Jesus, as given in 
the first three Gospels, seems to be that nature — that is, 
the earth, with its forces, and the living organisms upon 
it, from which man is not excluded — is in a state of 
harmonious conformity to the law and will of God. If 
man as a class seems to be outside of this harmony, he 
fell out accidentally, in a manner for which what appears 
to be the hypothesis of Jesus seemed to have offered an 
explanation. John represents Jesus as denouncing the 
world, as recognizing its utter and irremediable aliena- 

"Matt. xviii., 7. 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS l6'/ 

tion from God, and as saving his disciples from the evil 
in it, and to come upon it. While the evil, according 
to this writer's view, seems to be in society rather than 
in nature, the control of the divine beneficence over 
nature is nowhere asserted by him : no kindly or appreci- 
ative eye is ever once turned upon nature ; and there is no 
reservation or exception of nature in the doom that is to 
befall the world, out of which the elect of God have been 
rescued by a miracle of the divine mercy. 

The doctrine of the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit may 
properly be considered among the philosophic ideas of 
Jesus. The full development of this doctrine can only 
be found in the primitive Christian literature. As all 
schools of the disciples seem to have received this doc- 
trine, as it is a prominent feature of the Johannic Gospel 
— entitled to consideration as an expression of early 
Christian thought — its first suggestion may be fairly 
imputed to Jesus, though he did not develop it in any 
complete and systematic way. If we then find Peter and 
Paul and the writers of the apostolic Epistles and Gospels 
holding concurrently to a belief in the existence and 
agency of a Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit, it may be 
assumed that they derived that belief from the teachings 
of Jesus, though it is not quite so certain that he should 
be held responsible for the precise form in which the 
conception shaped itself in their minds. 

After the death of Jesus, the body of his followers, no 
one of whom could rightfully claim precedence over the 
rest, and all whose efforts for a spiritual vice-royalty had 
been rigorously repressed by Jesus," needed some sanc- 
tion for the immense political, moral, and spiritual author- 
ity they soon found themselves compelled to exercise 
over the assembly or church of the believers. Under the 
inspiration of their master, they had learned to regulate 
their conduct, to a large degree by a law of righteousness. 
They had been taught to restrain anger, to control lust, to 
repress ambition, to live above sordid cares and anxieties 
for merely earthly goods. In their simple and guileless 
souls, the peace and moral power, of which, in these 
endeavors after pure and noble living, they had become 
conscious, had seemed to them like some visitant from 



1 68 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

God. While Jesus was with them, they had disheartened 
him by their moral stupidity, their want of appreciation 
and spiritual discernment. But his terrible death, com- 
ing suddenly, after the most extravagant expectations of 
triumph and glory which they had hoped to share, touched 
their affectionate hearts with a new sensibility, and 
brought out in vivid lines the lessons of virtue, which 
seemed to him at the time of utterance to have fallen on 
dull ears. Never does the power of a good life manifest 
itself in the hearts of men so grandly as when that life is 
just ended. Every sensitive conscience, melted to tender- 
ness by sorrow, vows to be the upright, faithful, and 
virtuous soul that has just become a divine image in the 
heart. This is man in his highest and best moods, and 
man at his best is divine. It is a noble self-abnegation 
of man, that he cannot believe his best thoughts and 
noblest choice come from himself, but are the prompting 
of a spirit of God. Jesus had taught his followers to call 
this influence the Holy Ghost, and that they were to trust 
and obey it implicitly. 11 

Accordingly, when he was dead, the Holy Ghost be- 
came sovereign in the kingdom of the watchers for the 
return of their real Lord. The manifestations of Jesus 
after his death seem to have been of a somewhat uncer- 
tain character. It came to be believed that his form 
had been seen and his speech heard ; but this belief dif- 
fered fundamentally, both as to modes and places of 
those manifestations, and as to the communications that 
had been received. That Jesus communicated with his 
followers after his death was firmly believed, and so they 
told that the commandments he had imparted to them 
were not by oral speech, but through the Holy Ghost. 
The Holy Ghost was to descend upon the believers as a 
baptism, giving them new powers to authenticate their 
mission as witnesses for Jesus throughout all the earth. 
The Holy Ghost had inspired the old scriptures, and 
made them a divine communication. 1 ' The gift of tongues 
was a gift of the Spirit, to descend upon all believers and 
be a sign of salvation from the impending destruction. 

This new power in the world was not a mere passive 
influence : it held judicial authority, and executed ven- 

aMatt. x., 19, 20. b Acts i., 2, 5, 8, 16. c Acts ii., 17, 38-40. 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 1 69 

geance on deceit and hypocrisy. a The Holy Spirit mi- 
nutely controlled the movements of the early apostles, 
directing them in what cities they should preach, to what 
prominent men they should appeal, and even in what 
houses they should lodge. b It was the Holy Ghost that 
fixed the canon of morals, which it was agreed should be 
imposed upon the converts from the pagan communities, 
who, somewhat to the surprise of the disciples, began to 
come into the Church. c 

Paul seems to have used the terms Spirit of God, 
Spirit of Christ, Holy Spirit, and Holy Ghost to desig- 
nate divinely conferred influences never very critically 
analyzed in his own apprehension. Oftener, when he 
speaks of the Spirit or the Holy Ghost, he seems to refer 
to the internally - manifested presence of the crucified 
Jesus. Thus, in a single Epistle, he declares the incon- 
gruousness of fornication in a regenerated person, whose 
body has become the temple of the Holy Ghost ; and 
also that Christ is the soul that animates even the body 
of the true believers, in which, as in a shrine or temple, 
the divine Spirit is worshipped.* 1 

In the dogmatic drama of John, the distinct identity of 
the Holy Ghost appears more clearly ; for, although Jesus 
is represented as saying that the Comforter, whom he is 
to send, is himself, who is to come, he oftener speaks of 
the Spirit of Truth, as an influence and a personality 
other than himself, whose coming to, and stay in, the 
world is to be a substitute for his withdrawn presence. 
This advanced development of the doctrine of the Holy 
Ghost, far toward the ultimate conception of the tri- 
personal Divinity to which the Church in a few centuries 
came, may be taken as another proof of the late produc- 
tion of the Johannic Gospel. 

Nothing appears more natural and consistent than the 
growth in the Christian mind of this conception. There 
fell to the new movement a jurisdiction so much larger 
than Jesus himself seemed to have contemplated that new 
principles, new precepts, and an enlarged philosophy were 
necessary to give it completeness, and to organize it as 

"Acts v., 3, 5, g, 10. >> Acts viii., 29-39; "•> '9> 2 °i x '-> I2 > '3 i x "'-> 2 > •*> 9-n- 

c Acts xv., 2H; xvi.,6, 7; xix., 2-6; xx.,23; xxi., 4. 

' I ' or. iii., 16, 17; vi., 15. 'John xiv., 16-26. 



170 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

a system of faith and life for mankind. The imperfect 
and provisional religion, which was sufficient for a world 
about to come to an end, was not adapted to a world 
developing into a larger civilization. More and more, its 
teachers and missionaries found themselves met by per- 
sonal and social contingencies which Jesus had not con- 
templated. They had to enlarge his code, to supplement 
his ideas, to utter oracles that he had not spoken, and 
even to qualify, limit, and contradict many of his absolute 
commands. It may be said that it is the peculiarity and 
vitality of Christianity, that its ideas were never formu- 
lated in definite and irrepealable statutes, that it was a 
spirit rather than a code ; that it was the awakening of 
the human moral sense, and sending it upon its long 
quest of truth, rather than the subjection of conscience 
to the authority of a revelation. The freedom which it 
gave was a freedom to question all authority, to criticise 
and to handle Jesus himself as he had handled Moses. 

How shall Paul and Peter and the witnesses of the 
gospel of Jesus, carrying new doctrines over the world, 
authenticate their mission ? Jesus had written no Bible, 
taught no complete system of philosophy or ethics, 
uttered no comprehensive canon of conduct. Of what 
he had taught, so far as tradition has preserved it, Paul 
seems to have been nearly ignorant. Yet he is never at 
a loss. He has eloquent and exhaustive discourses for all 
the different communities of the Roman world, in which he 
preached the gospel of Christ. To the Jew, he is a Phar- 
isee of the Pharisees, blameless in all the requirements of 
the law." In his intercourse with the cultivated and philo- 
sophic Greek, he lays open his liberal and comprehensive 
mind. b Before the common worldling, lover of pleasure, 
lover of wealth, he reasons of righteousness, temperance, 
and judgment to come. He teaches the fervent disciples, 
and by his frequent letters edifies the faith of all the dis- 
tant churches. How is all this original power consistent 
with his unbounded deference for the name of his crucified 
master ? Did Jesus teach all that he preached and wrote ? 
This is more than he could say, — much more than to us 
seems probable. His answer is : I teach as Jesus would 
have taught, if he were here. It is his spirit, the spirit of 

"Acts xxiii., 6; xxvi., 5; Phil, iii., 5. b Acts xxii., 22-31. c Acts xxiv., 25. 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 171 

God ; for in spirit he was one with God, who inspires me. 
The gospel I bring is not mine, but Christ's, working 
within me his will and pleasure. 11 

More and more, as the new religion developed, Jesus 
exalted into the heavens became worshipped as divine ; 
but, for the very reason that the worship of his disciples 
had elevated him to the heavens, it had banished him 
from the earth, and from practical control over their 
faith and life. The Spirit takes his place on earth, while 
the Church waits for his promised second coming ; and 
now it begins to be discovered that the Spirit was always 
in the world ; Peter finds that in all ages men who feared 
God and wrought righteousness were accepted of him ; b 
Paul that they who are without law are a law unto 
themselves, and the metaphysical poet, who wrote the 
Johannic drama, that Jesus was but a manifestation of 
the light that enlighteneth every man that cometh into 
the world.' 1 

Xow, it is not to be believed that this doctrine of the 
Holy Ghost, as it shaped itself in the creed of mediaeval 
Christendom, or as it is disclosed in the speeches and 
letters of the apostles or in the later expressions of the 
Johannic Gospel, originated with Jesus, or scarcely had 
the sanction of his authority. The germs of it, however, 
appear in his discourses. There is a Holy Ghost, more 
awful in his sanctity than even God himself, of an ineffa- 
ble dignity, with which the name of Jesus was not to be 
ranked, against whom it was fatal to the soul to commit 
sin ; for that sin had no forgiveness in this life nor the 
life to come." When he told his disciples that they need 
not be careful what defence they should make, if brought 
before rulers and kings, for their faith in him, that the 
spirit of their Father would speak within them/ it is not 
:nt that he wished them to believe that that spirit 
was a special influence, still less a divine personality, or 
any other than the communication by God himself, who 
is spirit, of the words the occasion might make fitting. 
So too, when he is made to say, The good Father is more 
ready to give the Holy Ghost to them that ask for it'-' 

"Romans viii., 1 ; [. < !or. in., 16 J xv., 1-4; Gal. i., 9, 12, 15, 16. •> Acts x., 34, 35 

c Romans ii., 14. <1 John i., 9. c Matt. xii. , 31, 32. fMatt. x.,20. 

K Matt, vii., 11 ; Luke xi., 13. 



172 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

than earthly parents are to give bread to their children, it 
is probable the later prominence of the doctrine of a Holy 
Ghost has distorted the report, given more correctly by 
Matthew ; " If ye then, being evil, know how to give good 
gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father 
which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him ?" 
Jesus seems to have taught that character is determined 
by the ruling love, and that men are to be judged by their 
words. As the eye is the light of the body, so is the 
heart of man the light of his soul. The words "heart," 
"soul," "spirit," and "mind" were used by Jesus as they 
were by his more cultivated disciples, with none of the pre- 
cision which modern metaphysical discussion has rendered 
necessary ; and it is not always easy to determine what the 
exact conceptions of Jesus were in reference to the moral 
faculties of man. Taking into view all that he said, it 
seems probable that he recognized a radical difference in 
the moral attributes of men. The good man out of the 
good treasure of his heart brought forth good things, the 
evil man evil things. The good tree could but produce 
good fruit, the bad tree bad fruit. How can ye, being 
evil, he once asked, speak good things? He held, too, 
that the word was the expression of the character. It 
is not to be inferred that he underrated the power of 
self-control and hypocrisy, or was easily deceived by per- 
sons who came to him with professions of elevated and 
devout sentiments. 11 On the contrary, there are signal 
instances given where, with a keen insight, he detected 
the imposture of such assumptions, and exposed the evil 
principles underlying plausible professions. By words, by 
which a man was to be justified or condemned, he meant 
only genuine or sincere words, — perhaps more than this, 
the expression of conduct as well as of speech. By words 
in that large sense, — that is, by all the spontaneous ex- 
pression of the character, — men were to be judged in the 
great day of judgment. For men tainted with moral evil, 
men blind to the influence of the divine light, and who in 
their perversity imputed good deeds and pure words to 
corrupt influences, he seemed to have had no hope of 
repentance. 1 ' He wished to withdraw himself from them, 
and to leave them to the fruit of their own evil growth. 

"Matt, vii., 22, 23 ; xii., 33-37. h Matt, xii., 31, 32. 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 1/3 

With instinctive and intense aversion to bad men, 
whose very presence inflicted a pang upon his sensitive 
spirit, we have to reconcile another class of declarations 
equally authentic, that he was a friend of publicans and 
sinners, a that he came not to call the righteous but sin- 
ners to repentance, b and that there is more joy in the 
heavens over a sinner repenting, than over many just 
men who need no repentance. The joy over the repent- 
ance of a sinner may be accounted for because it is so 
difficult and rare an achievement, the natural and gen- 
eral law being for the corrupt tree to bring forth corrupt 
fruit, and the evil man to be incapable of doing good 
things. If we may consider the character of some of 
his disciples, it will probably become apparent that cer- 
tain forms of sensuality, growing out of natural temper- 
ament, often a taint of heredity, might, in Jesus' esti- 
mation, more readily yield to remedies from without 
than the more subtle vices of the soul, such as envy, 
malice, ambition, and impiety. The judgment of the 
world corresponds to his, and notes that intemperance, 
licentiousness, and even a rash and angry temper may 
be controlled by moral considerations, by favorable influ- 
ences, and by a resolute will; while those infestations of 
natural baseness return in force, after the strongest self- 
condemnation, and intrude themselves into the selectest 
privacy of the most favorable environments. In this 
connection, it is hard to reconcile a very marked pre- 
science in Jesus to detect under professions of piety 
unci virtue men who were really base with his indis- 
criminate preference for the poor, unless he had come to 
believe that the state of poverty was itself a state so con- 
genial to virtue that only the good were to be found in 
that condition. It is hard to account for the harshness 
with which he repelled the advances of the Pharisees, — 
a sect so well accredited in history, — under whose influ- 
ence such an eminent character as Paul had been reared. 

Looking further for the philosophical ideas of Jesus, it 
is found that he believed in devilish possession, and that 
diseases and infirmities among men are due to the mali- 
cious agency of an evil spirit. It seems to have been the 
belief of the age of Jesus that insanity was a possession 



1/4 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

by evil spirits or devils, the intensity of the diseased 
mental condition being due to the greater number of 
demons employed in the infestation. It has been claimed 
for Jesus that he did not share in this superstition, and 
that the narrative of his life, in dealing with his cures 
of the insane, necessarily conforms to the ideas of the 
nature of insanity prevalent in the world in his lifetime ; 
and that, if he seemed to give some sanction to those 
ideas in the language he sometimes used, it was only in 
deference to the popular mode of thought, and to make 
his beneficial agency intelligible to the persons relieved 
and to the people who surrounded him. 

This explanation cannot fairly be entertained without 
doing such a violence to the veracity of the record, as to 
leave it an untrustworthy foundation for any definite con- 
ceptions of the character, opinions, and even of the exist- 
ence of Jesus ; and, accordingly, it must be excluded from 
this study. It seems scarcely possible for those who 
believe his recorded words authentic, or those even who 
find themselves obliged to accept them as reliable data 
of his history, to doubt that he shared substantially the 
prevalent opinion on this subject of his countrymen and 
of his times. He declared in his Sermon on the Mount 
that many in the day of judgment would say, with appar- 
ent truth, that they had cast out devils in his name, 
whom he should not recognize as his followers. 11 He 
gave his sent-out disciples, who were in his name to 
proclaim the kingdom of heaven at hand, power against 
unclean spirits to cast them out, and charged them to heal 
the sick and cast out devils. 1 ' When the Pharisees heard 
of his power over people generally believed to be pos- 
sessed with fiendish spirits, they imputed it to diabolic 
agency. The devil himself, they said, helps him. But 
Jesus turned most effectually their imputation, by asking : 
Can Satan then cast out Satan? Will the devil thwart 
himself?" — a saying that would have no force or perti- 
nency, unless he himself believed in demoniac possession. 

Luke tells that, once in a synagogue of Capernaum, 
there was a man who had in him the spirit of an unclean 
devil, — that is, according to our ideas, a form of insanity 
well known, under which the patient gave utterance to 

■ Malt, vii., 22. l>Matt. x., 18. c M a it. xii.. 24-27. 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 175 

obscene language. When this spirit invoked Jesus as the 
Holy One of God, he rebuked not the man, but the spirit 
in him, and bade him be silent and come out. a 

The disciples whom Jesus had sent forth to cast out 
devils found a man conjuring by his name, and forbade 
the unauthorized worker ; but Jesus rebuked them, and 
recognized as of his party all who were doing his work. b 
When the seventy disciples returned from their mission 
and reported to Jesus that, through his name, they found 
even the devils subject to them, he greatly exulted, and 
said: "/ beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven! 
Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents 
and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy." 
But he told his disciples not to rejoice because the 
spirits were subject to them, but because their names 
were written in heaven. c On another occasion, he gave 
with minuteness some of the laws of demoniac posses- 
sion. He said that a cast-out spirit betook itself by some 
weird propensity to dry places in quest of rest, and had 
longing to get back, as to its home, to the soul whence 
it had been expelled. Finding that soul empty, swept 
and garnished, it will associate with itself more wicked 
spirits — their number seven is specified — and returning 
to the doomed man make his last worse than his first 
state. d Scarce an instance can be found elsewhere in 
the recorded sayings of Jesus, where he seems to have 
undertaken the exposition of a general theory. Such a 
disclosure of the recondite rationale of spirit-infestation 
could hardly have proceeded from one who disbelieved it. 
When told that Herod was plotting to take his life, 
Jesus called him a fox, and said that for three days he 
must continue to do cures, and cast out devils, within 
which time it was not possible that a prophet could be 
destroyed. In vindicating himself for giving straight- 
ness to the woman who had a spirit of infirmity, a work 
done on the Sabbath, he said : Ought not this woman, 
whom Satan hath bound these eighteen years, to be 
loosed from her infirmity on the Sabbath? 6 

With these data, it is possible to construct in some of its 
details Jesus' conception of the divine providence in the 

a Luke iv., 33-35. b Luke ix., 49, 50. c Luke x., 17-20. 

d Luke xi., 24-26. <•■ Luke xiii., 16, 32. 



I76 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

world. The world is God's ; its changes are his appoint- 
ments ; its laws, mainly beneficent, are the expressions of 
his goodness. He sends the sunlight and the rain. He 
gives to the flowers their beauty, and to the birds of the 
air their food, in the mere bounty of his beneficence. 

These are indeed but glimpses of the universe as it 
looked to him; but they seem fairly to imply, that he 
thought of nature, as well under the control of an overrul- 
ing benevolent will, and of living creatures, as following 
in their instincts the controlling purpose of God. He did 
not seem to consider men in harmony with this divine order. 
He never overlooks the radical distinction between good 
and evil men. From each proceed words and actions 
according to their kind. It is nowhere found that he 
held that God is the father of all men. It was to his 
disciples only, after he had withdrawn himself from the 
thronging multitudes, for whom the mysteries of the king- 
dom of heaven were not open, that he allowed the rela- 
tionship, which permitted them to approach the Highest 
with the address, "our Father in heaven." - There were 
many, even of those that strove, who would not enter into 
life ; b and the multitudes crowded the broad thoroughfare 
to destruction. With those even, who so far recognized 
his mastery as to call him Lord, and who could cast out 
devils and do wonderful works in his name, he should in 
the end deny his relationship, as workers of iniquity. 
Only they who were the light and salt of the earth, they 
whose righteousness exceeded that of scribes and Phari- 
sees, were recognized by him as children of the Highest.' 1 
The poor were the children of God and inheritors of the 
kingdom, not solely on account of their poverty, but 
because he seemed always to impute to the estate of 
poverty a certain humility, meekness, and self-control, 
compatible with the heavenly state. The rich were not 
excluded, but the test of their sincerity was the surren- 
der of their property ; and from this class he almost de- 
spaired of winning subjects for the kingdom of heaven. 6 
The sensual and intemperate were not despised. Con- 
scious of the strength of his own purity, and almost 
exempt from the temptations that assailed them, he be- 

a Matt, v., :, 2; vi.,9. I'Liike xiii., 24. c Matt, vii., 22 ; Luke xiii., 24. 
d Matt, v., 13, 20. cLuke xviii, 22. 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS I 77 

lieved that there were periods of moral revulsion from 
sensual indulgence, promotive of sincere repentance. So 
he sought the society of such persons to invite them, 
when under the compunctions of an aroused conscience, 
to virtue and temperance." For proud men, oppressors, 
the malicious, the evil-minded, for hypocrites and formal- 
ists, for the cunning and self-confident, he had only repro- 
bation, sometimes expressing itself in language exceeding 
the moderation which he prescribed as a rule for other 
men. b 

The wickedness and evil which he could not fail to find 
in the world, it is certain that he imputed in part to the 
agency of evil spirits. He always associated the curing 
of disease with the dispossession of malignant powers. 
He believed that, in healing the sick and restoring sanity 
to the mentally deranged, he was warring with Satan, and 
bringing his kingdom to an end. c It was Satan, and not, 
as modern devout thought would conceive in a like case, 
the mysterious providence of a good God, that had bound 
the daughter of Abraham for eighteen years with an in- 
veterate infirmity.' 1 According to his theory, the physi- 
cally diseased, the paralytic, the blind, and the maimed, 
arc prisoners of the devil ; and it is the mission of a di- 
vine redeemer to effect their relief. e When multitudes 
are healed, when reason returns to the insane, he sees 
Satan as lightning fall from heaven, and the malignant 
spirits that had infested the world driven out before the 
power of the coming king. Thus, Jesus seemed to think 
that men had fallen out of the order that pervaded nature 
as a whole, partly because the mass of mankind were 
genetically wicked, partly because they were suffering 
from an infestation of evil spirits, whose malign influ- 
ence manifested itself in physical infirmity and in mental 
derangement. 

While it is fairly presumable that Jesus never sanc- 
tioned the extension of the divine fatherhood to the whole 
human race, it is equally probable that he believed evil 
men were children of the devil. £ Such became unques- 
tionably the distinct Christian conception after his death. 
The Johannic Gospel, which may always be cited as an ex- 

» Matt. XL , 19. '> Matt, xxiii. OLukex.,18. dLuke xiii., 16. 
■ Luke iv., iS. ' John viii., 44, 49. 



178 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

pression of the opinions of the Christian converts of the 
first centuries, distinctly imputes to Jesus the declaration 
that the Pharisees were children of the devil. John the 
Baptist had called the Pharisees and Sadducees, even 
when showing some purposes of repentance and right- 
eousness by seeking his baptism, a generation of 
vipers," and had declared that it did not lie within his 
mission to give them any warning against the wrath to 
conic. Jesus had repeated this most denunciatory epi- 
thet on two different occasions, and in addition called the 
Pharisees serpents, whose escape from damnation of hell 
was virtually impossible. 1 ' 

The serpent, the old serpent, the dragon, were names 
used by the New Testament writers to designate Satan, c 
the chief of the evil spirits, of which the Jewish people 
had had a distinct conception for several centuries before 
the time of Jesus. When, therefore, Jesus addressed the 
Pharisees as serpents and the progeny of vipers, he fairly 
imputed to them a devilish origin ; and the Johannic 
drama did no violence to his thought, in making the rela- 
tion as actual as the paternity of God in reference to the 
followers of Jesus, and in declaring that it was as natural 
for the Pharisees to do the lusts of their father, the devil, 
as it was for Jesus to do the works of his Father, God. 

It is not quite apposite to this discussion to consider 
the conception of modern Christendom of the universal 
fatherhood of God, otherwise than to say it is an unau- 
thorized inference from the teachings of Jesus and of the 
New Testament writers, and that the universality of the 
relationship necessarily destroys it. Of a father, we have 
no other idea than of one exercising toward his children 
that special preference and favor that grows out of natural 
affection. When the relationship of father becomes so 
broad as to include all men, the possibility of preference 
and favor, which are of the essence of paternity disap- 
pears. But we are compelled to enlarge the regard and 
affection of the supreme will, so as that it shall cover 
all sentient beings, and to consider it impartial. What 
nature thrusts everywhere upon intelligent observation 
is the impartiality of God, — that God does not prefer 
men to sheep, that he allows the struggle for life to go 

"Matt, iii., 7. bMatt. xii., 34; xxiii., 33. c Rev. xii., 9; xx., 2. 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 1 79 

on between the meanest and noblest forms of creation 
without intervention, giving to the latter not always the 
advantage, never an advantage not due to their superior 
equipment of faculty. Mankind, sedulously studying the 
problem, has not yet been able to determine that the good 
man competing with the bad man has any extrinsic suc- 
cess, any reward or help not an adjunct of his own virtue. 

It may also be questioned whether Jesus, in emphasiz- 
ing the divine sonship of good men, in making the father- 
hood of God a psychological fact instead of a figure of 
speech, really elevated the old idea very distinctly enun- 
ciated by the Hebrew prophets and by the Greek sages 
before his time. That which is named integrity, virtue, 
righteousness, is conformity to the law, order, and plan 
of nature. Out of this conformity springs highest wel- 
fare, deepest peace ; so that man, under the correction of 
his moral sense, has come at last to learn that the path 
of virtue is the path of the progress of the universe, and 
that goodness, rather than pleasure, is the goal toward 
which all spiritual life advances. Now, the ancients had 
come to express this in this striking figure : " Like as a 
father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that 
fear him," or regard the highest good. Like, the com- 
parison is preserved, as between things not identical. God 
is other than man, something higher than man at his best. 
Could man get a stronger motive than this for righteous- 
ness ? True, it comforts the struggling good man to be 
told he is a son of God ; but it compromises his idea of 
God to infer that, since he is then a son of God, God is 
like his child. Pressing the relationship beyond the sanc- 
tion of a motive and the uses of an inspiration, and com- 
paring the reverence of a sincere and devout Pharisee 
with the arrogance and presumption of whole sects and 
generations of Christian saints who say our Father, might 
it not be feared that we have exchanged an elevating, 
spiritual conception for an anthropomorphic and personal 
Deity too nearly related to us to be reverently worshipped ? 

It already appears that Jesus classified men according 
to their kind, as children of God, and not children of God; 
and we have been able to determine some of the prom- 
inent characters embraced in this description. What 

■ i's. ciii., 13. 



I SO OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

were his own relations of regard and estimation toward 
these classes ? 

Among the beneficent words of Jesus that are especially 
remembered are these : " The Son of man is come to 
save that which was lost." n There is more joy in 
heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety 
and nine just persons that need no repentance. b Jesus 
is called in the Church the friend of sinners, and his 
message to the world of its destruction and the coming of 
the kingdom of heaven is called the good news. Jesus 
said, when rebuked for tolerating the society of openly 
vicious persons, that he had not come to call the righteous 
but sinners to repentance ; c and he declared that God was 
more pleased with mercy than he was with sacrifice,' 1 leav- 
ing it plainly to be inferred that the mercy he loved in 
men he would not fail himself to exercise toward the 
penitent. But we must consider, in connection with these 
declarations, others of a different character. He called 
the civil magistrates and political authorities who would 
prosecute his disciples wolves. 6 He said his mission was 
only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and that it 
was not proper to give to heathen dogs the food the 
master had provided for his children.* The excommuni- 
cated disciple was to be to his brethren like a heathen 
and publican ; that is, outside of their fellowship and 
charity.* The foolish virgins in the bridal procession, 
types of the non-elect, the rejecters of his mission, like 
the pretenders who had followed him, working cures and 
calling him Lord, he would profess that he never knew. 
The goats, representatives of those not his followers, 
and who had ministered neither to him nor his disciples, 
were to go away into everlasting punishment. 11 All mere 
worldly men, they who eat, drink, buy and sell, plant 
and build, they who are occupied with business, were 
all to be destroyed, when the Son of Man was revealed, as 
were the inhabitants of Sodom.* The importunate prayer 
of the elect should bring down upon the wicked not 
blessings, not repentance and salvation, but speedy ven- 
geance and punishment. 3 

"Matt, xviii., 1 1. b Lukexv.,7. c Luke v., 32. d Matt, xii., 7. 

«Matt.x., 16, 17. fMatt. xv., 24, 26. gMatt. xviii., 17. 

li Matt, xxv., 2-i2, 23, 46. > Luke xvii., 26-30. j Luke xviii., 7, 8. 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS l8l 

Recurring now to the parables of the lost sheep, the 
piece of silver, and the prodigal son, which have been 
accepted as expressions of the universality of Jesus' be- 
nevolence, we find their scope considerably restricted. 
The lost sheep was still one of the hundred that belonged 
to the fold of Israel. He represented not an outside 
sinner or heathen, but only a lapsed disciple, over whose 
defection the angels wept, and for whom the good shep- 
herd was searching among the mountains. It might still 
be true that the good shepherd, as he said, was only sent 
to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.* The woman 
must find her own lost piece of silver. No strange coin 
could fill its place. 1 ' The prodigal was still a son, and 
heir of his father's wealth. No alien and no servant was 
to receive the kiss of the reconciled father weeping* on 
his neck. c 

So when Jesus said the Son of Man was come to save 
that which was lost, it was in reference to one of the lost 
little ones or believing disciples whom he warned his 
followers not to despise, and whose angels always stood 
before God to defend them. It is the Father's will, he 
said, that not one of these little ones should perish. d But 
like the fatherhood of God, carefully restricted by Jesus 
to righteous men and believers, the love and saving pur- 
pose of God toward the lost of his fold have been pre- 
sumptuously extended to all men. 

Nothing was more original and characteristic in the 
moral philosophy of Jesus than his exaltation of service 
and his reprobation of ambition, of love of precedence, 
and even of self-estimation, however just. He himself, 
though he called himself master and even lord, came, he 
said, not to be served and honored, but to do service and 
even to give his life for others. In all secular govern- 
ments, it was the prince who held and the great who 
exercised all authority/ In the economy which he should 
establish, the really great should be the servant of all 
the rest. The contentions for rank and distinction 
excited his indignation. He censured the scribes and 
Pharisees because they chose the uppermost rooms at 
feasts and the chief seats in synagogues, and to be 

a Matt, *., 5, 6 ; xv., 2|. b Luke xv., 8. c Luke xv., n-32. 

<1 Matt, xviii., 6, 10-34. u Matt. xxiii., 8. 'Matt, xx., 25-28. 



l82 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

greeted by their fellow-men with the title of Rabbi." In 
the Church, he said, let the greatest be servant, and let 
him that exalts himself be abased. He gave directions to 
his followers that, when invited to a feast, they should not 
arrogate their own dignity by taking the most honorable 
places ; but, choosing the humblest, the host himself would 
measure their rank, and, inviting them to a higher seat, 
give them honor before all the guests.'' The sheep who 
were placed in the grand separation at the last day on his 
right hand, and admitted into everlasting life, were awarded 
that felicity, not more because they had ministered to him 
and the least of his followers when sick, destitute, and in 
prison, than because they had done these deeds of benefi- 
cence in utter unconsciousness and had forgotten the 
doing of them. When once there rose a strife among 
the disciples which should be greatest, Jesus placed a 
little child before them, and said whoever received that 
child as his follower received him, and that the least 
among them should be greatest. No one could enter the 
kingdom of heaven till he had been converted and become 
a little child ; that is, till he had unlearned that ambition 
for precedence and honor, and reverted to the guileless 
innocence and unconsciousness which is a trait of infancy.* 1 
Of his personal attachment to his disciples, who with 
artless and uncritical faith had accepted him, he spake 
with earnest warmth. Better be cast into the sea with 
a millstone fastened to the neck, than give offence to one 
of these. Of these blessed ones, a guardian angel stands 
ever before the face of God ; and it is his will that not one 
shall perish. 

Blessed, he said, are the meek : they shall inherit the 
renovated earth. 6 Even spiritual gifts and personal in- 
tegrity were not to be arrogated ; nor was any good ser- 
vice, however great, to claim its reward. Will a man 
thank his servant, who for hire ministers to him ? When 
ye have done all, ye are but unworthy servants/ The 
moral man, who in his prayer remembered his good life, 
though to thank God for it, was condemned; while the 
wicked man, who bowed his head and acknowledged that 

"Matt, xxiii., 6, 7. •> I.uke xiv., 7-11. c Matt, xxv., 36-38. 

dMatt. xviii., 1-6, 10; Mark ix., 34. <•' Matt, v., 5. 

f Luke xvii., 9, 10. 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 1 83 

he was a sinner, went down from the temple justified.* 
In the same connection, Jesus put a light estimate upon 
the wisdom and culture of the world, as he did upon its 
virtue. The innocent and uncultivated child was to him 
the brightest type of manhood. While the critical faculty 
listens and doubts and rejects, the childish faith sees, be- 
lieves upon report, and is blessed. What the Father has 
hid from the wise and prudent he has revealed to babes. 1 ' 
This love of children is an amiable personal trait in 
Jesus, that has endeared his memory to the tender heart 
of the human race. Painters have depicted it, and enthu- 
siastic disciples have seized upon it to mitigate the aus- 
terity of a sublime and elevated character, stern in its 
devotion to duty, uncompromising in its rigorous and 
crucial dealings with all the weaknesses and appetites of 
nature. But those who have reared children know that 
infancy has aspects other than the morally picturesque; 
that their innocence is rather the absence of these pas- 
sions, the force of which could not be trusted to their 
feeble powers of resistance ; that they assert all the 
natural appetites they have without the will or power to 
control ; and that virtue, which is the victory over pas- 
sions regulated by conscience and reason, is a grade of 
character far beyond the innocence which precedes the 
impulses that drive men to sins. It were indeed a most 
deplorable picture of the human condition, if the very 
process of human life resulted in degeneration and moral 
death. If to live is to fall into fatal sin, why should we 
wish that, our children should survive their infancy, and 
why should we labor to surround them with sanitary con- 
ditions, which, saving their human lives, imperils at the 
same time the life of their souls ? A just estimate of the 
opportunities of life satisfies us that it is, on the whole, a 
salutary discipline, that all its usual and legitimate expe- 
riences are promotive of virtue, and that, bad as society 
is, faulty and deceptive as are individual characters, the 
tendency of growth is toward self-control, toward temper- 
ance, toward love of others, toward justice, mercy, and 
piety. Society demands and expects of aged men and 
aged women, those who have had the widest experiences 
of human fortune and the most unrestricted careers 

» I. Hi- «vn!., 10-u. ii M.ut. x i., 25. 



184 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

of earthly prosperity, a strain of integrity and rectitude 
never asked of the young. With many deplorable excep- 
tions, the demand is generally met. 

It were better for the world if the followers and wor- 
shippers of Jesus had given better heed to his counsels 
concerning rank. They have, for the most part, set them 
aside as summarily and contemptuously, as they have his 
ideas about property. In no department has the struggle 
for power and precedence been so keen as in the Church 
calling itself Christ's. The democratic spirit, not a little 
inspired by the words of Jesus, has been able, in many 
communities and among many nations, to overthrow 
distinctions merely political, and to reduce society to a 
practical equality ; but the ranks of the priesthood, the 
titles of reverence which they demand, the vestures and 
badges with which they are decorated, stand upon such 
an authority of custom, that the ministry has ceased to 
be a synonym of service, and they who represent the Son 
of Man come no more to minister, but to be ministered 
to by the deference, the compliments, and tithes of the 
disciples. 

The example of the self-accusing prodigal is less com- 
mended by the good sense of this age than by Jesus. 
Not the confession of sin alone is acceptable to God. 
When the prodigal comes too frequently with his smitten 
breast and cravings of mercy upon his sin, we begin to 
ask that the confessed sin be abandoned. Perhaps all 
the Pharisee said of himself was true ; and there might 
have been those who knew the publican, and had been 
the victims of his extortion, who could have uttered a 
hearty Amen to all that he said. Not always self-con- 
sciousness and self-praise are to be condemned : a man 
may rejoice over a well-achieved work. While we demand 
modesty in measuring one's own worth or work, we 
demand truth more. David washing his hands in inno- 
cency, Paul exulting that he had fought the good 
fight and kept the faith, and Milton in his blindness 
boasting of his noble work with which all Europe rang, 
are more heroic figures than a defaulting cashier standing 
up in church-meeting and repeating, God be merciful to 
me a sinner. 

It has been seen that Jesus judged human character by 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF JESUS 1S5 

the ruling love. In accordance with this internal inquisi- 
tion into character rather than by the test which human law 
applies to outward conduct, Jesus held that evil thoughts, 
and not the omission of external purifications, defile a 
man. Out of the heart, he said, proceed evil thoughts, 
murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and 
blasphemies. 3 No teacher has been more searching in 
analyzing the very springs of conduct, and finding in 
motive and natural impulse the basis of character. Not 
the fatal blow, but the malicious purpose, is murder ; and 
he who is angry without just cause with his fellow-man 
has entered upon the path that leads to homicide, as he 
who cherishes and enjoys lust has committed adultery in 
his heart. 15 

The gravity and seriousness of his character, that rigor 
of mental integrity, which he prescribed to himself, and 
made a rule of living for others, was manifested in the 
great import which he attributed to all human speech. 
According to Jesus, no man must sport with his convic- 
tions, or advocate what he does not fully believe and feel 
the assurance of, out of levity or for the sake of argument, 
or to conceal an unpopular or dangerous conviction. All 
such tampering with the light of God in the reason of 
man was to him blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. It 
was when the Pharisees said, without conviction and 
with a dishonest purpose of turning against him a popular 
prejudice, that the devil helped him to cast out devils, 
that, after showing the falsity of the assertion, he went 
on to say : All blasphemy shall be forgiven but the blas- 
phemy of the Holy Ghost. They thus speak, because an 
evil heart cannot speak good things. But, for every false 
and frivolous word that man shall speak, he shall give an 
account in the day of judgment, and he shall be justified 
or condemned as his words have been good or evil. 

He thought, too, that a man was known by his moral 
sympathies. The man who loved, as well as who did, rec- 
titude was blessed in his regard. The ruling love is still 
the test of character. The good man in the strife be- 
tween good and evil takes always the side of the good. 
As Paul fitly expressed it afterward : " He rejoices not in 
iniquity, but he rejoices in the truth." The figure of Jesus 

a Matt, xv., 1 1, 1 8. t> Matt. v.. 21, 22. 19. Matt, xii., 24, 31-37. 



1 86 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

is still more striking, when he says, The man, whom God 
shall bless, hungers and thirsts after righteousness. If, 
for the sake of a righteous deed he has done, or done by 
another he has approved and applauded, he shall suffer 
persecution, his very persecution, in the peace it brings to 
his soul, shall be a manifestation of the favor of God, and 
an assurance of the blessedness he shall inherit. They, 
too, who reconcile the offended, who make peace between 
those engaged in or ready for strife, showing to souls 
blinded by anger the better way of forgiveness and con- 
cession, and how an exaction and an oppression may be 
overcome and turned to justice by submission, are espe- 
cially blessed. b They not only live for themselves and 
enjoy the peace that comes from virtue, but they have 
carried the light of their own lives into the darkened 
minds of other men, and taught them by the experience 
of forgiveness the satisfactions of charity. 

It is not to be supposed that Jesus felt confident that 
all violent and angry men would yield to these influences. 
There were still some natures so rooted in evil that the 
pearls of good actions were not to be thrown away upon 
them. c They would trample in derision the mild and for- 
giving spirit, and turn like swine to tear the hand that 
interposed to arrest their wrath. 

a Matt, v., 6; I. Cor. xiii., 6. b Matt, v., 9, 10. c Matt, vii., 6. 



CHAPTER VII. 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF JESUS. 

" It is the work of Religion to sift the primitive instincts and expectations 
of mankind, and see which of them can have a place in the critical intelli- 
gence. . . . The more of God you collect in the facts which he causes, the 
more consistent and sublime becomes your faith. . . . Why, at the very 
moment when Religion's first opportunity has come to make the finite 
prove the infinite, which she presumes, need she continue the old prescrip- 
tion of church extension, Bible-worship, miracles, and parish life ? " — John 
Weiss' Immortal Life. 

Questions relating to the first cause, including the 
problem of the being of God, belong to the domain of 
philosophy. Religion, in its stricter sense, concerns 
itself with considerations how fitly to placate, honor and 
serve the Deity. Next to the philosophical ideas of 
Jesus, it becomes important to comprehend what were 
his religious ideas ; what, by precept or practice, did he 
inculcate as a religious cultus and mode of worship. 

In all ages the ideas, which men have held in reference 
to the character of the gods, have dictated the forms 
of their worship. The savage, whose god is scarcely 
human — rather a monster whom he never thinks of 
loving or even respecting — whom he fitly represents as 
pent, a dog, or a lion, and whose power and malice 
lie socks to propitiate, will be worshipped by the offer 
of victims. Accept this slaughter, this torture of my 
enemy, my son, my cattle, and spare my life, is virtually 
the prayer of the terror-stricken devotee. When a milder 
and more human nature came to be imputed to the gods, 
worship consisted in bringing to them fruits and the 
incense of roasted flesh, in celebrating before them 
games in which they might delight as spectators, or in 
imitating the actions which tradition had imputed to 
them. Such conceptions of God could but react upon the 
worshipper who lived, and spoke, and thought as his gods 
were believed to have done. 



188 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

But, before historic times, man had acquired a moral 
sense. This acquisition was, however, an inevitable step 
in his progress. Until he had acquired the faculty 
of considering his own actions, and approving or disap- 
proving them, man was not likely to make any record 
of his living, or to leave any monuments whereon his 
thoughts could be expressed. When conscience began 
to assert itself in men's living, they began to impute 
to the gods the moral judgments, which they passed 
upon themselves, and upon each other. Before the dawn 
of history, before any records were made, out of which 
history could be constructed, religion had become moral. 
If, in the primeval time, the gods had been violent, 
revengeful, or licentious, they had all at a later epoch 
reformed, and a moral order had been introduced into 
the ideal heavens. Mixed up with mythological concep- 
tions involving the gods in treachery, falsehood, murder, 
and debauchery, there had arisen in enlightened minds 
among the Hindus, the Egyptians, the Persians, and the 
Greeks the faith that truthfulness, justice, purity, benevo- 
lence constituted the basis of the divine character, and 
that the gods were fairly on the side of righteousness. 

The Egyptian and Phoenician ideas of God, which, in 
modified form, were perpetuated in the paganism contem- 
porary with Jesus, were more cheerful and attractive than 
the more abstract and spiritual conception which the 
Hebrew and some other of the Semitic tribes had cher- 
ished. The Olympus of the Greeks was a family and a 
home, as well as a royal court. A god married and living 
on terms of domestic confidence — albeit not always har- 
monious — with a goddess, feeling a partiality for and 
conferring special advantages upon his own children, was 
a picture which gave reality and form to the faith of the 
Greek. The very multiplicity of gods — a godhead capa- 
ble of degrees of power and wisdom, shaded down 
through inferior deities, demigods, and heroes to man — 
mitigated the awful intensity and incomprehensibility of 
his idea, and better accommodated it to his feeble mental 
capacities. 

The Hebrew stood at the head of an entirely different 
cultus. It cannot now be studied in its roots and princi- 
ples, but rather in its full development in the Old Testa- 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF JESUS 1 89 

ment, and in the Jewish religion. It is attributed to 
Moses ; and, as all great ideas, that have considerably 
affected civilization, are found to have their source in the 
mind of some great genius, it is quite probable that the 
Hebrew religion had its essence, and the germs from 
which it grew, in the inspiration of a single mind. The 
best summary of it may be found in a declaration ascribed 
to Moses himself : " Thou shalt prefer no gods to me ; for 
I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers 
upon the children to the third and fourth generations, and 
snowing mercy to thousands of them that love me and 
keep my commandments." a 

For the family god, for the deities that ruled the 
heavens and the earth with complicated intrigue, and not 
a little strife among themselves, who, though they had at 
last attained order, by mutual submission, by a reasonable 
self-control, and by abstaining from the excesses of their 
youth, were originally preternaturally sensual and cruel, 
the devout Hebrew substituted a god without father or 
child, always pure, and raised above the appetites of men, 
but jealous of other gods, eager for worship, placable by 
gifts and offerings, and vindictive in his punishments. 
Such an image could inspire in men little else than fear; 
and, indeed, the fear of God was declared to be the prime 
sentiment of religion, the beginning of all knowledge. 1 ' 
To accommodate an idea of God so spiritual and abstract 
to the low culture of his people, Moses had two devices : 
one was a mode of worship with its organized and conse- 
crated priesthood, its minute prescription of sacrifices, of 
holy clays, of purifications and ceremonies so exacting 
and imposing as to keep the imagination occupied and 
awed, if not with the thought of God, with the zeal of 
his service ; the other was by associating their God with 
their worldly thrift and prosperity, which he was believed 
to promote, and by connecting him with all their family, 
tribal, and national ambition, so that he came tobeconsid 
ered by excellence the tutelary deity, the power that gave 
them success in their invasions, victory in their battles ; 
and that forsook them and allowed them to be defeated 
and enslaved, when they neglected or corrupted his wor- 
ship. 

• Ex. xx., 5, 6. b Ps. cxi., 10; Prov. i., 7; Eccl. xii., 13. 



I9O OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Thus, Moses, or, to speak more assuredly, the Mosaic 
spirit, as manifested by a succession of leaders and proph- 
ets, pulled down and married to human nature a spiritual 
idea of the godhead, not, as the Phoenicians and Egyp- 
tians had done, by concessions to sensuality, but by 
concessions to family and national jealousies, and by culti- 
vating that idea in an outward worship of sacrifices, deco- 
rations, and ceremonies. Among both races, however, as 
is shown by the testimony of their extant literature, the 
tendency was, as the moral sense became developed, to 
eliminate from this notion of the deity whatever was sen- 
sual on the one hand, and jealous and vindictive on the 
other hand ; and to shape the divine conception into 
something corresponding to man's best conception of 
goodness, virtue, righteousness. God is not propitiated 
by libidinous rites, but by chastity and pure affections, 
taught the philosophers and poets among the Greeks. 
God is not pleased with whole burnt-offerings and sacri- 
fices, but with mercy, justice, and integrity, taught the 
Hebrew prophets, growing more clear in their conviction 
and more emphatic in their declaration, as the nation 
ripened in intellectual and ethical culture. But, even in 
Jesus' time, the superfluous sacrifices were not omitted ; 
and Jesus himself, when comparing the weightier matters 
of justice, mercy, and faith with the petty prescription of 
tithes of mint, anise, and cumin, could go no further 
than to say, "These ought ye to have done, and not have 
left the others undone!' B 

It is probable too, from the sceptical tone of parts of 
the Book of Job, and of the prophecies attributed to 
Jonah, that the idea that Jehovah was the tribal God of 
the Jews, and had treated them with special favor among 
the nations, had been seriously shaken in thoughtful 
minds by the succession of heavy calamities that had 
fallen upon that people. These calamities, involving the 
total destruction of three-fourths of the nation, and 
making the remnant the sport and spoil of the great con- 
quering races of the world, seem to have fallen heaviest 
upon them at the very period when they had come to be 
most assiduous and punctilious in their cultivation of the 
Jehovah worship, as well as most careful in maintaining 

"Matt, xxiii., 23. 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF JESUS IQI 

the integrity of their personal conduct. The Hebrews 
were ever a stiff-necked people, slow to abandon a na- 
tional prejudice. They held to sacrifices after the proph- 
ets, whom they chiefly honored, had assured them that 
sacrifices were an offence to the Deity ; they believed 
themselves the chosen people of God, after, in the eyes of 
all the world, they had become the most forsaken and 
down-trodden of the nations. 

Jesus placed himself by the side of the greater prophets 
of his race in declaring the excellence of righteousness 
over worship; and in rebuking the national pride in 
Jehovah as their exclusive god. He said that upon 
supreme love to God, and equal love to man, rested all 
the law and the prophets. 11 It was doubtless in deference 
to his well-known opinions that an "enlightened scribe" 
once said to him, The love of God is better than all 
whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices. b Jesus said that a 
man at enmity with his brother should be reconciled 
before he came to the altar of God with gifts ; and also 
that God was propitiated by mercy rather than by sacri- 
fice. But, on the other hand, he said that he came not to 
destroy the law, and that whoever should teach that the 
least of its commandments might be broken should be 
least in the kingdom of heaven/ 1 He declared that the 
scribes and Pharisees inherited the authority of Moses; 
and told his disciples to observe and do whatever they 
taught. Petty as was the tithe of mint, anise, and cumin, 
it was to be punctiliously paid ; and, though the duty 
of reconciliation to the offended brother preceded the 
offering of a gift at the altar, he was careful to say that, 
that prime duty done, it was right to go afterward and 
offer the gift. 

In the chapter on the Political Ideas of Jesus his 
judgment with regard to the pretensions of the people 
of his nation to be the peculiar people of God has 
been already considered. He had in the first of his 
career distinctly admitted that pretension. He said he 
was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, 
and that the heathen were dogs that were not to be fed 
from the master's table/ But, later, he had announced 

Mark xii., 28-34. •> Matt, xxii., 40. c Matt v., 23, 24; xii., 7. 

'1 Matt, v., 17-19. e Matt, xxiii., 2, 3, 23. f Matt, xv., 23, 26. 



1 92 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

the rejection of the Jews, and the choosing of a nation 
that would bring forth the fruits of righteousness. 8 He 
had declared Zaccheus, who had with such heartiness 
accepted his ideas of the kingdom of heaven, a son of 
Abraham, b and had consigned Dives, a type of the 
covetous children of Abraham, to a place of torment. 

After he had fully possessed himself of the belief that 
he was the prophetic king of the new kingdom of heaven, 
he began to exercise authority commensurate with that 
dignity, and to deal with the law of Moses with more 
freedom. He used violence in expelling from the pre- 
cincts of the temple the money-changers and the sellers 
of sacrificial victims/ 1 A refined and humane sensibility 
might have been unpleasantly affected by the noise, the 
cruelty, the reek and ordure that necessarily accompanied 
the constant 'slaughter and roasting of animals, — the 
religious offering of an entire people collected within the 
enclosure of a single temple and its appurtenances. A 
mind that had been able to overcome its wholesome nat- 
ural repugnance to such a spectacle, by the sense of its 
sacredness, need not have been offended at arrangements 
which, on the whole, tended to mitigate the horrors of 
a great public slaughter and sacrifice. It was this very 
mitigation, however, that Jesus, armed with a. whip, in 
apparent disregard of his lesson of suffering rather than 
giving blows, undertook to abate. 

His kingly prerogative of suspending or modifying the 
divine and civil law is asserted in his declaration, in reply 
to a charge of Sabbath breach, that he was Lord also of 
the Sabbath days/ The institution of the Sabbath was a 
distinguishing and fundamental article of the ecclesias- 
tical law. The Jews believed that its imposition had 
been contained in the lex legum, the central summary of 
the national statutes, the ten commandments written 
upon the table of stone, miraculously given to Moses upon 
Mount Sinai/' Even the most moral of the prophets, 
who had spoken disparagingly of sacrifices, insisted upon a 
punctilious observance of this weekly holy day/ 1 Among 
the Jews, however, the essence of the observance con- 

aMatt. xxi., 43. •> Luke xix., 9. c Luke xvi., 14, 15, 19-31. 

dMatt. xxi., 12. «Matt. v., 39. t Matt, xii., 8. 

P Ex. xx., 8-1 1. h Ez. xx., 12 ; Isa. lvi., 22. 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF JESUS 193 

sisted in a cessation of labor. There was no such auster- 
ity and rigor of silence and devotion as has made the day 
so dismal in the households of Scottish Presbyterians and 
New England Puritans. Amusements and relaxation 
were quite in accordance with the character of the day. 
It is therefore unlikely that Jesus gave any offence to 
his countrymen by travelling about the country, and 
going through the grain fields on the Sabbath, or by 
accepting an invitation to a feast upon that day, so large 
and so promiscuous, that the guests occupied different 
stories of the house, and contended among themselves for 
precedence. 1 Since it was a Pharisee that prepared the 
feast, and gave the invitations, it is presumable that the 
customs of the most religious people were in strict 
accordance with his act. But the abstention from labor 
was insisted upon to an extent that to us seems quite 
absurd, not only by a whimsical public opinion, but ap- 
parently by the letter of the law itself. A tradition had 
found its place in the Pentateuch of a man found gather- 
ing sticks to kindle a fire upon the Sabbath day, who had 
been stoned to death by order of Moses. b One of the 
greater prophets had declared the unlawfulness of carry- 
ing any burden on the holy day. c What the punctilious 
Jews objected to — and surely they stood fairly upon, the 
better opinion — was not that the disciples went through 
the fields of corn on the Sabbath or even ate the corn, 
but that, in preparing the food by rubbing it in the hand, 
and blowing away the chaff, they had worked on the Sab- 
bath, just as the man had worked, who had gathered 
sticks. Jesus himself does not seem to have been able to 
maintain an argument against these sound opinions of 
the scribes. Virtually, he acknowledges that they have 
reason. Virtually, he admits the Sabbath breach, and jus- 
tifies it, on account of his own mastery of the law. He 
cites to the Jews instances in which David on a certain 
occasion did, and the priests in the temple habitually do, 
tilings that the lazv forbids, and yet are morally blameless.' 1 
David and the priests may suspend the law. This is the 
plain implication. Much more may the Son of man, Lord 
of the Sabbath days, suspend the law of the Sabbath. 

n Matt, xii., i ; Luke xiv., 1,7. b Num. xv., 32-36. 

ejer. xv., ai. <l Matt, xii., 3-8. 



194 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

As the record stands there is an inconsistency in the 
example and precept of Jesus in reference to the obliga- 
tion of the law of Moses. He had taught that every jot 
and tittle of the Mosaic law was to be observed; and he 
had called it all a tradition of the elders." He had said 
mercy was better than sacrifices ; and yet he had directed 
that the pettiest sacrifices should not be omitted. He 
had denounced the Pharisees for their long prayers and 
their punctilious devotions, as children of vipers doomed 
to damnation ; and had told his disciples to honor them, 
and fulfil their requirements, as the lineal successors of 
Moses. He had excused the breach of one of the ten 
commandments, and had justified himself as a sovereign 
might, who should suspend his own decrees. 

The equivocal position of the master was destined to 
involve the little band of his followers in a real difficulty. 
When converts presented themselves from among the 
heathen, passing all the tests of discipleship, full of 
faith in Jesus and zeal for the gospel, and ready to comply 
with any rule of conduct, as a manifestation of their re- 
pentance, what law must be given them, by what code 
must their external life be regulated ? If Jesus had dis- 
tinctly taught that the law of Moses was either binding 
or abrogated, if his attitude in reference to it had been 
more distinct and intelligible than it now appears to 
us in the evangelical traditions, Peter, James and John 
would have stood up to declare his commandment, and 
his authority would have closed discussion and delibera- 
tion. But there was evidently no distinct tradition either 
way as to his judgment. So the apostles entertained the 
question among themselves, trying to decide it upon just 
and rational grounds, aided by a liberal interpretation of 
ancient scripture, and devoutly and humbly imputing 
their own chastened good sense to the dictates of the 
Holy Spirit, and concluded, "that it seemed good to the 
Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden 
than these necessary things ; that ye abstain from meats 
offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, 
and from fornication, from which if ye keep yourselves, ye 
shall do well." h Of these four requirements, three are 
trivial and pertain to customs, only of importance as con- 

a Matt, v., 17-19,21,27,33. '> Acts xv., 28, 29. 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF JESUS I95 

nected with a culture especially Jewish. They were 
directions not given by Jesus, nor had he ever indicated 
that he thought such matters worth serious consideration. 
His comprehensive declaration, that not what went into 
the mouth, but what proceeded from it defiled a man, 
showed that he thought lightly of the religious value of a 
special diet. The fourth requirement alone is funda- 
mental and moral, and had the sanction of Jesus' precept, 
and of the ethical principles in which the Jews, and even 
the pagans, had been educated. 

There is, besides his treatment of the Sabbatical impo- 
sition, another incident in the career of Jesus, which shows 
that he considered the law of the old covenant merely 
provisional and liable to revisions by himself, when his 
authority in the heavenly kingdom should be definitely set 
up. Coming to John to be baptized, it is told that John was 
quite awed by the dignity of such a proselyte, and mod- 
estly remarked, that it would be more becoming for him 
to accept baptism from Jesus rather than to confer it on 
him. The august disciple by no means repels the del- 
icate compliment, but says : Suffer it to be so for the 
present. It is proper that we should fulfil all the rites? 

On the whole, it seems fairly to be inferred from the 
precepts and example of Jesus — as noticed by a casual 
observation — that he held to the obligation of the 
national worship, even its least and most trivial prescrip- 
tions. It was in force as a provisional arrangement, and 
until he himself, in his new kingdom, sovereign over the 
law, should revise it and complete and fulfil it. But he 
ably supported the opinion of the most eminent and 
enlightened of the prophets in declaring, that if these 
least things should be punctiliously done, mercy was 
better than sacrifice, faith was higher than worship, to 
do righteousness was more pleasing to the Deity than 
prayer, and supreme love to God and brotherly love to 
man were more religious than all whole burnt-offerings. 

In an earlier chapter, two distinct notions imputed to 
him in regard to prayer have been incidentally remarked 
upon: one, that it must be without vain repetition or 
much speaking ; the other, that the Deity might some- 
times be moved to grant to importunate and persistent 

a Matt. iii. , 13-15. 



I96 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

asking, to be relieved of a personal annoyance, what he 
would not accord from his wisdom or his benevolence. 
It is somewhat singular, that Jesus' own tastes, if such 
an expression is allowed, did not lie in the direction 
of verbal devoutness. Not without satire, in the Sermon 
on the Mount, he had spoken of the hypocrites, who love 
to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corner 
of the streets. It was the practice of the heathen to 
arouse the attention of their preoccupied gods by loudly 
calling their names and by the repetition of petitions. 
Nothing is finer in the Older Scripture than the contrast 
between the priests of Baal, calling from morning till 
noon, in the monotonous invocation, "O Baal, hear us," 
and the simple one request of Elijah, prophet of Jehovah, 
followed by the divine response. 3 In the enlightened 
spirit of the writer of the legend, Jesus affirmed that 
prayer was not needed to make human wants known to 
God, and that men were not heeded for their much 
speaking. b God is the heavenly Father, he said. Will 
not any good father give to his children what they need, 
at least, for the asking ? Prayer is not a service that 
God needs. It is not an honor and compliment, the 
omission of which will offend him. Go to the heavenly 
Father for what you want, and when you want. Simply 
ask, that is all. There is no account of any formal or 
periodical prayer practised or taught by Jesus. He did 
not have an evening or a morning prayer ; a Sabbath 
clay's, or a new moon's, or a new year's season of sus- 
tained and continuous devotion. His personal practice 
seemed strictly in accord with the idea, that the relation- 
ship of God to good men was a natural and psychological 
relation ; and that the intercourse between children and 
father should be that suggested by such a relation. If 
one wants from a father food, raiment, fav.or, forgiveness, 
counsel, he goes and asks. He has no set times or pre- 
scribed modes of paying court to his father. So when he 
wants of God daily bread, deliverance from temptation, 
help or patience in sorrow, forgiveness for an offence, the 
occurring want, not an occurring season is the occasion 
and reason of his prayer. It is related of Jesus that he 

a I. Kings xviii., 26-39. b Matt, vi., i, 8. 

c Matt, vii., 7-1 1. 






RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF JESUS IO,7 

went apart occasionally to pray. a Some of his ejaculatory 
petitions in the midst of his followers are given, some- 
times taking the form of addresses to God, sometimes of 
communings with himself." In the great struggle and 
darkness that involved him just preceding his arrest, when 
he seemed to be hesitating whether to remain and con- 
front the evil powers, trusting only to the divine assist- 
ance, or to evade the danger by escape — which seemed 
easy enough, and was quite in accord with the direction 
he had given his followers, " When they persecute yon in 
one city, flee to another" and with his own previous course 
— he prayed most earnestly, but still not formally, utter- 
ing one simple request for deliverance or strength, and 
each time using the same words. c The intercourse of 
Jesus with the invisible divine spirit, which he always 
called his Father, seems to have been of a realistic rather 
than of a poetic and ideal nature ; and this characteristic 
method of Jesus was the new cultus he gave the world. 

Only great and pure souls like that of Jesus can bear 
this familiarity with the Infinite without compromising 
or abating its ideal perfection. The development of the 
Jewish cultus, as depicted in the Old Testament, was 
from a primitive contemplation of God, that presented 
him in human aspects, and imposed upon him low offices, 
up to a conception of him as transcending the compre- 
hension of the human understanding. Canst thou by 
searching find out God? was the questioning of early 
piety. But the tendency of this habit of thought is, that 
it banishes from the phenomena of nature the creative 
and energetic agency of Spirit, and from the conscience 
of man the controlling sovereignty of Will. On the other 
hand, the fruit of the realistic idea, especially in minds 
deficient in reverence and poetic susceptibility, is to bring 
Deity to the human level, and make God the patron and 
promoter of personal ambitions and antipathies. 

One of the evangelists seems to assert that, having 
given explanations of the divine beneficence and omni- 
science, and of the human relationship to God, Jesus had 
omitted any precept as to the method of prayer. The 

"Matt, xiv.,23; Luke xi., 1. 
■'■ Matt, xi., 25, 27; I.ukc xiii., 34, 35; nx., 41-44, 
oLukc xxii., 39-46. 



I98 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

disciples once said to him, reminding him of the omis- 
sion, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his 
disciples."' 1 It was only then, that Jesus dictated the 
brief and memorable ejaculation which has been repeated 
through Christendom as the Lord's Prayer. It consists 
of a god-speed for the kingdom of heaven, a petition for 
daily bread, for forgiveness in the measure of man's for- 
giveness, and for delivery from temptation, and the power 
of the evil one. 

Fasting was a service of religion in much repute with 
the devout classes in the time of Jesus. His old master, 
John the Baptist, seemed to have been rigorous in the 
imposition of fasts upon his followers, so that the differ- 
ence in the two schools of adherents to the new kingdom 
of heaven was remarked upon, and explanation of it de- 
manded of Jesus himself. 11 Primarily, the joyous character 
of the life of Jesus with his disciples, as contrasted with 
the asceticism of John, must have been due to the natural 
tastes of the former. He had not denied even the impu- 
tation of being a wine-bibber, a familiar of publicans and 
loose-living people. He gladly went to feasts ; and coun- 
tenanced by his presence entertainments given among 
the class of the stricter religionists upon .the Sabbath 
day. His infrequent attendance on the temple service, 
if, indeed, he ever participated in it, and the satirical 
spirit, in which he described the precise formalism and 
long prayers of the Pharisees/ show that his direction 
to his disciples : When ye fast, be not of a sad counte- 
nance, that ye may appear unto men to fast, but anoint 
your head and wash your face, sprang from a low 
estimate of the religious edification of fasting. It can 
scarcely be said that this direction, standing alone, is 
equivalent to saying, When ye fast, do not fast ; but 
such an inference would not be wholly .illegitimate, if 
the fact were considered that, from his example and 
precepts, the cessation of fasting came to distinguish 
his followers from other religious schools of his time. 
When, however, John's disciples asked the reason of 
such a peculiarity, he said that, while he, the bridegroom, 
was with them — while the King was present with his 

*Luke \i., 1-4. i' Matt, ix., 14. cMatt. xi., 19. 

J Matt, xxiii., 14. « Matt, vi., 16-18. 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF JESUS 1 99 

subjects — feasting and not fasting was an appropriate 
demonstration/ Let them fast when I shall be with- 
drawn from them. There will be a period of separation 
after these festal occasions, and until I drink with you 
again in my Father's kingdom. His dominant idea — the 
expectation that more and more occupied his soul — was 
the explanation he himself gave of a practice, that with- 
out such explanation might have been attributed to the 
natural cheerfulness of his character. 

In reverting to fasting again after his death, the Chris- 
tian believers were, on the whole, justified by the tradi- 
tion, as it stands. The bridegroom had been taken from 
them, and his return had been delayed. He said that 
during his absence they would fast. And they are still 
fasting and waiting. 

Baptism was a religious rite, which was, in the time of 
Jesus, and still is, esteemed of great utility and sanctity 
in the external service of religion. Both Matthew and 
Mark impute to Jesus, manifesting himself after his death, 
the requirement of baptism as a test of discipleship, — a 
test so rigorous that it excluded from salvation the unbap- 
tized. b In discussing hereafter the tradition of the resur- 
rection, reasons will be offered why none of the conversa- 
tions imputed to Jesus after his death can be treated as 
having any historic significance. 

The probability seems to be that, as to all the external 
rites, whether of sacrifices, fasts, prayers, or baptisms, 
Jesus was somewhat indifferent. They did not comport 
with that stress he laid upon righteousness or good con- 
duct — a righteousness that comprehended the underlying 
motive and principle as well as the overt action. The 
writer, called John, reports — what tradition may have pre- 
served — the statement that, though Jesus accompanied 
his disciples to their baptisms of converts, he did not him- 
self baptize. John Baptist had declared that his baptism 
of water was merely emblematical of Jesus' greater bap- 
tism of the Holy Ghost. ,; To such capacious minds as 
those of Jesus and Paul, mere ceremonies and rites of 
religious service were trivial and non-essential; for Paul 
thanked God that he had never baptized, save in the 
instance of two persons and a single family. God, he 

"Matt, ix., 15. 1' Malt, xxviii.,19: Mark xvi., 15, 16. <-• Matt, iii., II. 



200 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

said, had called him to preach the gospel, not to baptize." 
Still, Jesus had himself submitted to the rite of baptism. 
Doubtless, he expressed no dissent or adverse comment 
on the baptisms, on which his followers were insisting ; so 
that, after his death, his messengers and missionaries, 
who, with the exception of Paul, were incapable of the 
large generalizations and logical inferences, with which the 
ethical and philosophical ideas of Jesus should have been 
applied, found it easy to reinstate baptisms, fastings, 
prayers, and even sacrifices in the ritual of the Christian 
Church. 1 ' When solicited, indeed, Jesus had given his 
followers a brief form of prayer ; but he had expressly 
forbidden public and social prayer, and prayers with much 
speaking and repetition. He had declined to appoint 
fasts, as incompatible with his presence among his follow- 
ers ; and, though submitting to baptism, that he might be 
blameless as to rites, he had left no place for baptism 
among the services he desired to be observed. 

One formality, if anything so impromptu and unpremed- 
itated as well as casual and natural, can be called a formal- 
ity, it is quite evident he appointed, — the commemoration 
of himself, and of his death, by eating bread and drink- 
ing wine. It was evidently the suggestion of the instant. 
He had eaten and drunk at one of the annual festivals 
with his chosen apostles. He must have had other dis- 
ciples and adherents — certainly many women believed on 
him, and their fidelity, perhaps because it was less peril- 
ous to them, outlasted that of the men at his public trial 
and crucifixion. Believing children, too, had followed him 
from Galilee. But all these women, children, and the 
general body of disciples, were excluded from this last 
festival ; and each narrative asserts that only the twelve 
sat down with him in the upper room to celebrate this 
last passover. Art, that has perpetuated the scene in 
the memorable painting of Leonardo da Vinci, corrobo- 
rates and perpetuates the tradition of the evangelists. 
After the feast, he takes the common food and drink — 
the universal bread and wine, then as now the diet of 



a I. Cor. i., 14-17. 












l> Acts ii., 38, 41 ; viii., 


'3.36,38; 


ix., 18; x. 


47. 48; xiii 


, 2 


xxi., 33. 


c Matt. x. ; xvi., 5, 6 


Luke xxiii 


, 49; Mat 


t. xxi., 15 ; x 


xvi 


, 20-2 ;; Mark \ 


.i- xxii., 14. 













RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF JESUS 201 

whole races and generations of men — and asks the twelve 
to drink and eat once more in memory of him — the wine 
typical of the blood he is about to shed, the bread of 
the body to be bruised and broken by the hands of cruel 
men. He asks them to do this simple act ever afterward, 
till he shall come again. He evidently contemplated 
only a brief separation. He believed, as he had said, 
that the next time he drank wine with them it would be 
in his Father's kingdom, not many days afterward. The 
act was as casual and spontaneous as it could well be, 
not a formal religious ceremony to be held in a temple or 
a synagogue, and to be performed with music, prayers, 
and sacrifices, but an after-part, as it was an after-thought 
of the family meal, the gathering of intimates at a gen- 
eral or special festival. It is doubtful if this tradition 
justified the establishment of a religious ceremony that 
has so far outlived the expectation upon which it was 
founded. It is more doubtful if a request to twelve 
personal friends, selected out of the mass of his acknowl- 
edged disciples, to do a certain act in memory of him 
till his return to them justifies the whole mass of nomi- 
nal Christians, uninvited, in perpetuating the act as a 
sacrament. 

Everything, however, that was external, everything that 
appealed to the senses and emotions in the practices, 
which Jesus originated, or to which he conformed, or 
which without a sharp and incisive reproof he only toler- 
ated, his followers seem to have seized upon, perpetuated, 
and exaggerated. So this casual and unpremeditated 
expression of affection between Jesus and a few confi- 
dential friends has grown into one of the most solemn, 
imposing, and elaborate ceremonies of our modern wor- 
ship of Christ. Fitly to celebrate it requires an order 
of consecrated and decorated priests, and temples so 
costly that the wealth gathered by centuries of human 
toil is lavished in their construction and luxurious furni- 
ture. To be excluded from participation in it is a mani- 
fest token of rejection and damnation ; n while a subtle 
and mysterious grace emanates from its decorous perform- 
ance, which it is believed changes a licentious, cruel, 
oppressive, and deceitful man into a saint worthy the 



202 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

society of angels and the everlasting communion of God. 
While thus we find little in Jesus' words or acts, that 
sanctions the elaborate forms of worship, which have been 
for centuries perpetuated in his name, — perpetuated 
because of conventional ideas, the growths of earlier 
religions, and because his example was somewhat equivo- 
cal, and his teaching not wholly consistent with itself, — it 
must not be overlooked, that what he did most emphati- 
cally teach and insist upon as essential was, that the 
divine mind is best placated by human virtue. 

Prayers have always begun with ascriptions to God of 
all those attributes deemed by man the noblest and the 
best, — power, wisdom, glory, justice, mercy, and holiness. 
These qualities are ascribed to the Deity, not because 
men think God is pleased with a grossness of adula- 
tion, that would be offensive even to a man of diseased 
vanity^ The ascription is not so much to placate God 
by praise, as it is to help the rude and feeble mind of 
man to some adequate conception of the greatness of the 
Being with whom he presumes to seek intercourse. He 
enumerates to himself the features of the dim ideal, which 
he strives to make present and real to his thought; and 
it is not till he has recited and reminded himself of the 
perfections and completeness of the divine nature, that 
his own mind is brought up to its highest powers, its 
clearest perceptions, its most virtuous purposes. The 
prescribed prayer of Jesus, brief as it is, does not omit 
these strenuous efforts of the soul to lift itself toward 
the highest possible conception of God. " Hallowed 
be thy name is a self -exhortation to reverence, as are 
the ascriptions with which, without much speaking, the 
worshipper retires from the august and serious inter- 
view: "Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory 
forever."" But no mere reverence, however genuine ; no 
ascriptions of honor to the divine name, however just, — 
will take the place of well-doing. God is more pleased 
when men practise virtue than when they honor him 
with their words or with their offerings. Not those who 
have said, Lord, Lord, Jesus taught, but those who have 
done the will of God, will I, when I come in my Father's 
kingdom, recognize as loyal and favored subjects.* 1 On 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF JESUS 203 

a certain occasion, Jesus said those were his nearest kins- 
men, who did the will of the heavenly Father. 11 Forgive- 
ness of injuries, the reconciliation of offences, is of more 
pressing urgency than any religious service. " First be 
reconciled to thy brother," he said, " then come and offer 
thy gift." b To be meek, merciful, pure, a maker of peace, 
a lover of rectitude, is to be blessed of God — to be 
his elect ones, to whom is given the kingdom of heaven. 
Men were not to take the moral law forbidding murder, 
theft, false witness, adultery, in a mere legal and literal 
sense ; they were not to watch for its omissions and 
defects, as permissions and sanctions of appetite and evil. 
They were to outrun the literal sense of the requirement 
with the integrity of their well-doing. They were to deal 
with evil deeds at the very impulse and motive whence 
they sprang ; to arrest murder in the unreasonable anger 
which begat it ; and to anticipate adultery in the ungov- 
erned lust that incited it. 1 ' The good-living which, he 
declared, the new order of the age demanded, was not the 
literal conformity of the conduct to an outward decency, 
such as satisfied the scribes and Pharisees, but a charac- 
ter with which evil-thinking, evil-wishing, as well as evil- 
doing, were incompatible. All violence was to be disarmed 
by submission, all exaction by generosity, and by thus 
imitating God, who sent only good upon just and unjust 
men/ his followers were to become the children of the 
Highest. 

In this emphasizing virtue, in placing character above 
mere conduct, Jesus was working in the direction of the 
most enlightened men of his own race ; and was teaching- 
more plainly than had the great sages of remote antiq- 
uity, and the poets and philosophers of his own times, 
that the upright man is he that merits the divine favor, 
and that, as Matthew Arnold has epitomized the lesson 
of the gospel, God is "the eternal not ourselves that makes 
for ncrJitcousness." But, like all these teachers, Jesus 
understood that the life of virtue was no easy road. It 
i^ easier to follow the natural passions and appetites 
toward indulgence, excess, and oppression, than to curl) 
and control them. A broad road accordingly leads to 

a Matt, xii., 50. t'Matt. v., 24. cMatt. v , 5, 6, 9. 

d Matt, v., 22, 28. 'Matt v.,2o. f Matt, v., 39-45. 



204 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

destruction, and the thoughtless many throng it. A 
strait road leads to life, and few there are that find it/ 
It is this desperate chance of salvation, that makes the 
effort for its attainment such an invigorating stimulant 
to brave souls. Jesus seemed well to have compre- 
hended that it is ever by the survival of the fittest, by 
contending at fearful odds against environments substan- 
tially evil, that men have attained what they have won 
of mental and moral superiority to the brutes. So 
onward toward the' angelic and divine the way is still 
the same. The masses perish : elect souls, striving with 
the might of desperation, conquer a higher life. 

In an earlier chapter some misgivings have been 
expressed at accepting in its absolute form the im- 
putation that God imitates men in their resentments 
and vindictiveness. Jesus distinctly made that imputa- 
tion, in language not easily misunderstood. The only 
comment he made upon the prayer, the form of which 
he prescribed, was in reference to the petition for 
forgiveness, made conditional upon the forgiveness of 
the suppliant. It was in these words : " For if ye for- 
give not men their trespasses, neither will your heavenly 
Father forgive your trespasses." 13 Jesus not only taught, 
that men should forgive wrongs indefinitely and abso- 
lutely, but that, in so doing, they became like God, who 
did the same. But he said also that God severely pun- 
ished the unforgiving. He told a parable of an indebted 
servant, whose debt, on account of his poverty, his 
master had unconditionally released, but who pursued 
his own debtor for the last farthing with exaction and 
imprisonment. Then, the before mild and merciful 
master became angry, cancelled the gift bestowed un- 
worthily upon a sordid man, and put him to the torture 
to wring from him his once-forgiven debt. " So like- 
wise," said Jesus, most explicitly, "shall my heavenly 
FatJier do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive 
not every one his brother their trespasses." c 

The lord of the parable cast off and consigned to a 
place of weeping and gnashing of teeth the servants 
who, while watching for the return of their master, began 
to eat and drink and smite their fellow-servants, or who, 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF JESUS 205 

in other words, took occasion to punish with blows their 
fellows who had done them injury. But the lord of the 
servants was the type of himself, who, coming in his king- 
dom, would consign to fearful punishment the revengeful 
and unforgiving.* 

While we are compelled to approve of mercy and for- 
giveness, and perceive that it is better to bless than to 
curse, better to reward evil with good, we also see how 
hard it is, by a threat of punishment, to bring the heart 
to that gentle mood which makes such virtues possible. 
Against threats only obduracy and implacability rise in 
an undisciplined temper. A magnanimous forgiveness, 
an unexpected patience under affronts, breaks down 
resentment, and carries a germ of gentleness even into 
a base soul, quite likely to grow into some word or act 
of mercy. But no genuine love was ever begotten by the 
compulsion of an exaggerated and fearful punishment, 
threatened as the alternative of its exercise. 

But while, upon the philosophic side, this view of the 
character of the Deity seems to jar upon the integrity and 
dignity of our conceptions, on the side of worship and 
religion it is salutary. No passion is more inveterate in 
human nature than revenge. For its gratification, men 
have submitted to all kinds of self-torture ; and no lust has 
been sweeter to the depraved thought, than this of de- 
ferred but complete and excessive vengeance. The relig- 
ion, which Jesus taught, combated this gigantic passion 
in a gigantic way, and by considerations, which the 
victims of it could easily appreciate. So uncontrollable is 
this passion, that, in all ages, men have boasted of it as 
the very measure of their manhood. Social practices, 
codes of statutes, systems of religion have accommodated 
themselves to it, as a fact of nature — something so 
deeply imbedded in the conditions of human life as to 
be restrained and regulated rather than to be obliterated. 

Jesus, true to his thorough and radical treatment of 
evils, commanded extirpation, and left no forgiveness 
possible for the vengeful. As if he had said : Well, since 
it is nature to hate those that hate you, to render an eye 
for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, act out the natural 
impulse ; but know that God, though loving and good, 



206 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

will leave you out of the sphere of his mercy in the catas- 
trophes that await the soul, as it goes on to its destiny of 
weal or woe. 

This lesson of mercy, just as it stands, has been a potent 
influence in the culture of the human race. None of the 
leading principles of Jesus have been on the whole so 
deeply impressed upon historic Christianity ; and it must 
be confessed that none have exerted so powerful a control 
over the rude and savage natures, which in the Christian 
era one after another have come under his influence. 
There have been among races of men, nominally Chris- 
tian, wars, invasions, massacres, cruel punishments and 
vengeances, both public and private ; but the image and 
memory of Jesus have always come, first or last, to counsel 
forgiveness, and to hold up a minatory finger threatening 
the mysterious divine wrath against the heart that bars 
out charity from its sentiments. If there have been 
prayers for calamities to befall enemies, heretics, and evil- 
doers, they have been less inspired by the wo.ds and 
spirit of Jesus, than by a conception of God drawn from 
other and older teachers — a God visiting the iniquity of 
the fathers upon the children of the third and fourth 
generation/ 

Though Jesus had taught the intrinsic distinction be- 
tween good and bad men, and had emphasized with start- 
ling precision the different estimates in which they were 
held by God, and the enormous disparity in the fates that 
awaited them respectively, he by no means exaggerated 
the difficulties which lay in the way of an individual pass- 
ing from one condition and destiny to the other. Strive to 
enter into life, he said; but with striving it is possible. 11 ' 
The favor and help of God are bestowed upon evil men, 
when they become penitent. There is, he declared, 
more joy in heaven over a sinner repenting than over 
many just persons needing no repentance. When the 
profligate turned his back upon his loose life, and, with a 
purpose of becoming a faithful servant, returned to his 
father, the father not only received him, but rejoiced over 
him, and astonished him by the warmth of his affection 
and the magnificence of his gifts.' 1 Penitence with Jesus 
was, however, much more than confession or sentiment. 
To gain the divine approbation, the profligate must be- 

"Ex. n., 5. I'M. m. vii., 13, 14. Luke xv. ,7. <l Luke xv n-32. 



RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF JESUS 20J 

come pure, the oppressor humane, the envious man mag- 
nanimous, the rich man must give up his riches. 

Human laws have not yet been able to adopt in its 
absoluteness the idea, that penitence, even if sincere, is 
to be a substitute for punishment ; nor have moralists 
gone so far as to hold that repentance restores to the 
lost integrity, what has gone out in evil-doing. The 
reclaimed drunkard is not so noble a man, as the man 
whose reason and conscience had, from his first respon- 
sible acting, easy control over his appetites. There is 
danger, as well as falsity, in the doctrine that an experi- 
ence of sin is salutary, in that it brings the sinner nearer 
to the affectionate heart of the Father in heaven. The 
law of nature seems to be, that all departure from the 
line of rectitude is evil in itself, and its fruits evil ; and, 
however grateful the human or the divine forgiveness 
may be, the punishment belongs to the sin, and must be 
borne with patience as a part of it. 

Here, as elsewhere, the ideas of Jesus must be accepted 
as of a somewhat provisional character. He had in his 
mind the catastrophe of a world about to perish under the 
retributive vengeance of its creator. It might almost be 
said, that, in the immediate apprehension of such a calam- 
ity, he had to a degree lost his presence of mind. A 
system of religion, leading and keeping pace with the 
cosmical movements of society, and the gradual prog- 
ress of men toward a more complete and symmetrical 
character, would have better fitted the actual conditions 
of existence. The crisis, the day of judgment, so prom- 
inent in the apprehension of Jesus, has been mercifully 
postponed far beyond his apparent expectation. There 
arc no indications in the heavens or in the earth that 
the crisis is any nearer our own age. No real good 
result will be attained by gathering up the wayfarers of 
the highways and hedges, and filling the kingdom of 
heaven with mere recruits, because the good things 
of the feast have been provided for this time, and can- 
not be kept. Such scouring of the byways for guests, 
in utter disregard of their characters, is sure to turn out 
ill; and not one, but many so gathered — the most of 
those so coerced — will be found not having the wedding 
garment, and fit only to be excluded from the feast. 
Not sudden repentance, not a momentary faith, that 



208 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

cries in shallow adoration, Lord, Lord, but doing the 
will of God from a good conscience — which is impos- 
sible except for natures trained in the practice of virtue, 
till it has become a habit and instinct of the soul — is 
the salvation, of whose gradual growth Jesus himself 
seemed to have a distinct perception, when he said : 
"First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn 
in the ear.'* "An evil man out of the evil treasure of 
his heart bringeth forth evil things." ' 

Undoubtedly there are natures like Paul's, like Augus- 
tine's, like Loyola's, that with passionate earnestness 
begin and follow courses of evil, believing that they 
are good. Some great revulsion, a vision of the truth, 
arrests them : they are converted, and carry the force of 
will and the fiery zeal, with which they pursued pleasure 
or persecution into the propagandism of a holy religion ; 
but these are exceptional cases. It is better to be a just 
person that needs no repentance ; for, if the angels will 
not rejoice over such a one, they have a certain unde- 
monstrative confidence and respect for him, which does 
him no less honor; while in their joy over the lost sheep 
they cannot repress the misgiving, that straying is apt to 
become a habit, and that the sheep that has been lost 
once may be lost again. Rectitude is to the reclaimed 
sinner a struggle and a warfare against all his propensity 
to do evil But by steadily repressing the propensity 
to do evil, and by doing the strange and repugnant good, 
the yoke of duty grows lighter, and more and "more 
adapts itself to the spontaneous movement of the soul. 
Nor does the work of regeneration end with life. By 
the disuse of evil, man has weakened the power of evil. 
That which was duty in the father becomes the habit of 
the child. At last a trained and strengthened moral 
sense becomes the trait and type of a better race, that 
even temptations cannot seduce from a hereditary integ- 
rity. But for these cosmical changes whereby mild and 
moral races have been in the long epochs developed from 
brutal and cruel savages, there was not time in what 
seemed to Jesus and his immediate followers " the ends 
of the world." 1 ' 

'i Matt, xii., 35 ; Mark iv., 26-20. b I. Cor. x., 11. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



» IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

"Let us reject all the human interpretations of this tendency to suppose 
a future life. Do not try to organize it for pain or bliss. Do not fresco our 
ceilings with its imagined scenery: it only draws upward our eyes to dis- 
cover gaudy colors on a surface of flatness. The closeness of such particu- 
lars is stifling to the soul, who prefers the impossibility of grasping one of 
the midnight stars, who shuns even their far-travelled hints, and plunges 
from their silvery coasts into wells of blackness, where not one planet roves 
to measure the depth of eternity. When you bring me reports from a Here- 
after, I begin to lose my faith in it." — John Weiss' Immortal Life. 

" The nobility of the Hebrew race began when it left behind the Egyp- 
tian creed of another life, and entered on the wilderness of wandering and 
pain, believing only in the present Deity; when it cast aside the 'Book of 
the Dead,' with all that solemn ritual and imagery, and the grave judg- 
ments of Osiris beyond the dark river, and, accepting instead for its sole 
portion the Ten Commandments, began its bleak but valiant march." — 
Joseph Henry Allen. 

Speculations about the destiny of men after death, 
strictly speaking, belong, too, to the department of phi- 
losophy. They are closely kindred to conjectures with 
reference to the pre-existence of men, whether in the 
human, angelic, or bestial form. Religion, which in its 
limited sense is the cultivation of the divine powers, 
viewed as higher than and external to man, or of the 
ideals shaped by his imagination controlled and informed 
by his moral sense, takes no direct cognizance of the 
states out of which men came to their human lives, nor 
of the states to which they pass upon surrendering their 
human lives. Both states will continue fascinating fields, 
inviting the exercise of the speculative fancy, till our 
minds, capable of looking before and after, shall learn 
their destiny. Philosophy that has found means to bring 
reliable intelligence from remote stars along the beam of 
light, that connects them with our sight, has found means 
to explore backwards and forwards upon the path of 
human progression, noting in the growth of the individual 
from birth to maturity, and thence to decay and death, 



2IO OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

the rise and development of faculties, sentiments, and 
ideas. Data have been gathered, upon which the just 
and legitimate deductions are still matters of investiga- 
tion and debate. Whatever opinions from these data 
have been reached have been fairly reached by the exer- 
cise of human faculties in their normal activity. It may 
not be presumptuous to believe, that, by the patient dis- 
cipline and exercise of the same faculties, men may yet 
master the problem of their existence in its end, as well 
as in its origin, with a degree of confidence quite equal 
to that, with which they believe the accredited facts of 
the physical universe, — that is, upon the basis of conjec- 
tures more or less verified by observations concurrent and 
repeated of uniform phenomena. Hints as to the when 
and how of the advent of humanity to the world are being 
rapidly noted and collated ; and the accumulating data 
are rapidly evolving themselves into a science, which, if 
not yet acceptable as absolute knowledge, has already 
become, a competent working theory, upon which nature 
may be observed, and by which individual conduct may be 
regulated. It is an expectation justified by history, that 
a highly endowed genius may yet be born among men, 
kindred of the great souls, whose names are pronounced 
with reverence and worship through successive genera- 
tions and by various races, who will be able to draw an 
outline of a scheme of the stage of being lying next 
beyond the mortal life, and of the mode, by which man- 
kind in its totality or as individuals, is connected with it. 
A careful scrutiny of the analogies of nature and of the 
tendencies and directions of human progress may be able 
to verify and establish this hypothesis. 

That nature, having produced, after tentative efforts 
continued through countless ages, a creature so mani- 
festly incomplete, so unsatisfactory to himself as man, 
will stop, satisfied with a result so inadequate to its cost, 
is highly improbable. The alternative thought of those, 
who hesitate to accept as verified knowledge the popular 
theories of the immortality of the individual, very rarely 
has justice done it. It is bitterly denounced as hopeless, 
irreligious, and atheistic, — as springing from a germ of 
evil and itself a germ of evil in the mind. A profound 
study of the problem of the destiny of man, not disturbed 



IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE 211 

by the hunger of mere animal instincts, may yet discover, 
that this alternative thougnt is more hopeful to all mag- 
nanimous souls, that have become capable of preferring 
greatest good to personal happiness, and more consonant 
with what we can see of the cosmic order, than a scheme, 
which rashly stakes the whole success of the creation and 
the reputation of the Creator upon the perpetuation of the 
one creature, who, of all sentient existences, has thus far 
most signally failed in achieving any worthy ends of his 
being. 

Religion has always claimed as its own province all in- 
vestigation of the problem of a future life, and has re- 
buked as irreverent and irreligious all purely philosophical 
inquiries in the direction of the after-world. It has this 
justification for such claim of exclusive jurisdiction. Con- 
duct is or may be affected by the beliefs, which are enter- 
tained as to its consequences in a life to come after this. 
We can forecast the result of good or evil actions as they 
may affect our prosperity and happiness in this life, by 
observing the fortunes of other men, and by reading 
the history of people that have lived before our time. 
Society has been built in the interests of morality. The 
greatest good is attainable only by conforming to lines of 
conduct, that the world has agreed to call virtuous. To 
do with patience, and in spite of fatigue, an equivalent 
share of the work of the world, to control greediness, 
anger, and lust, to respect the property, peace, and happi- 
ness of other men, to help the sick, weak, and disabled, 
and to educate and cherish the affections and sentiments, 
through which such good actions become spontaneous — 
these belong to the category of duties, the doing of 
which the moral sense of mankind requires and approves, 
the omission of which it rebukes. But to men, especially 
to men of strong passions, and with enfeebled or degraded 
conscience, the sanctions of duty are largely reinforced by 
anticipations of rewards or punishments. They see and 
feel the predicaments, in which a life of fraud, violence, 
sensuality, and indolence involves them, and those depen- 
dent on them ; and derive from the observation salutary 
lessons which arc great helps to virtue. When these are 
powerless against the stormy irruption of the passions, 
a new safeguard is found in the anticipations of prolonged 



212 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

suffering for ill deeds in hell, or of lasting joys for denied 
indulgences in heaven. But the ideas of a life after death 
are so vague and unreal in the minds of common men, 
that to make motives brought so far at all efficacious, the 
horrors of hell and the delights of heaven have been in 
all ages depicted with an exaggerated vividness, that has 
tasked the most enthusiastic imagination. 

It is a curious but indisputable fact, that what the Jews 
in the time of Jesus had come to believe in reference to 
a future life, they had not derived from their own script- 
ures, or from any communication believed to be a revela- 
tion from Jehovah. From the fact that their literature 
is singularly destitute of allusions to the immortality 
of man, and abounds in distinct affirmations that death 
terminates his career, it is fairly inferrible that the ideas 
of a resurrection, which begin to appear in the produc- 
tions of the later poets and prophets, are to be accounted 
for by the contact of the people in the relation of subjects 
and captives with neighboring nations, who are known 
to have had distinct beliefs in immortality. It is very 
apparent from the memoranda we have of the conversa- 
tions of Jesus that, with the exception of a small 
sceptical sect called Sadducees, the notions of the Jewish 
people in reference to a condition of existence after 
death were not unlike those of their immediate neigh- 
bors, the Egyptians and the Persians, and substantially 
similar to the views now entertained by all the civilized 
races of mankind. 

It is a matter of debate between scholars, where the 
"legendary traditions of the Jews leave off, and where the 
historic data begin ; but all archaeologists agree that, as 
a distinct people, the Hebrews came out of Egypt, where 
they had been held as slaves. Even if we reject as not 
historical the biography of Moses, the Biblical story of 
his expedition and preparation for the invasion of Canaan, 
the several distinct codes of the national and ecclesiasti- 
cal law embodied in the Pentateuch, and the speeches 
and exhortations with which they were explained and 
enforced, we can gather from other data the conjecture, 
that the revolt from Egypt was a religious, as well as a 
political revolt. 

It is probable that this revolt had a leader, and that 



IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE 21 3 

tradition has preserved his name. Egypt, in the time of 
the Hebrew exodus, was a civilized country, with a highly 
complex form of religion, of which the doctrine of a 
future life with rewards for virtuous living, and terrible 
punishments for evil deeds, was a distinctive feature. 
Connected with its theories of the nature of the deity 
or deities was a minute system of ethics, not substan- 
tially different from that believed in by modern Christen- 
dom. Though Moses in his ten commandments seems 
not to have departed from the ethical ideas by which the 
Egyptians endeavored to regulate their lives, he utterly 
rejected the distinctive dogma of the Egyptian cultus of 
a restoration of life after death, and of a heaven for the 
souls of good men, and a hell for evil men. In all the words 
and writings imputed to him, no motive is drawn from an 
anticipation of any life after the present life, or from any 
consequences to result in that life from the conduct of 
this. The rewards for virtue, and for obedience to the 
commands and the practice of the worship of the national 
god are all length of life, prosperity, and large posses- 
sions in the human state. Knowing now how the belief 
in heaven and hell had become popularized, and how it 
had entered into all the literature and daily thought of 
the two powerful races that surrounded the Hebrews — 
the Egyptians upon one side, and the Assyrians and 
Persians on the other — we can only account for the 
marked absence of such ideas in all the primitive litera- 
ture of the Jews by the supposition that Moses — said to 
have been instructed in all the science of the priest- 
hood — broke away from the doctrines of the immortal- 
ity of man, with something like the repugnance of an 
apostate. 

Prior to the Babylonian captivity, the Jews seemed to 
have believed the condition of the dead, great and small, 
was a condition of suspended animation in an under- 
world, not unlike the Greek Hades. In this realm of 
inanition there was no moral discipline. One lot befell 
alike the good and evil, from whose permanent condition 
...is no resurrection. This is the language of the 
Hebrew poets in the golden age of the national liter- 
ature: "As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away, 
bo he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no 



214 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

more. He shall return no more to his house, neither 
shall his place know him any more." a "That which 
befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts ; even one thing 
befalleth them : as the one dieth, so dieth the other ; yea, 
they have all one breath : so that a man hath no pre-emi- 
nence above a beast. All go unto one place: all are of 
the dust, and all turn to dust again." b "All things come 
alike to all : there is one event to the righteous and to 
the wicked ; to the good and to the clean, and to the 
unclean ; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacri- 
ficeth not : as is the good, so is the sinner. A living dog 
is better than a dead lion ; for the living know that they 
shall die : but the dead know not anything, neither have 
they any more a reward ; for the memory of them is for- 
gotten. Also their love and their hatred and their envy 
is now perished ; neither have they any more a portion 
forever in anything that is done under the sun." c 

But it is doubtful if the human mind has ever fairly 
mastered the real conception of death. Consciousness 
once begun cannot know or take note of unconsciousness : 
it is unthinkable. Our conception of death, as of a condi- 
tion entirely beyond experience, is inadequate. The near- 
est we ever can come to it is remembering some profound 
and dreamless sleep ; but, if the sleep was really a suspen- 
sion of all mental activity, the memory passes over the 
interval to the succeeding waking, and brings us no idea 
of the sleep. We can think of ourselves as dead, and of 
others regretting or missing us ; but consciousness cannot 
attach itself to the fact of our death, but vaults over, 
through a force of our own imagination, to the living 
thought of those that survive us. Lastly, we think of 
ourselves as wasting away in the grave ; but that, too, is a 
conception of our own living thought taking note of an 
apprehended physical condition of what was once our 
body. All these, it is easy to see, are ideas not of death, 
but of life. 

So it is found that among nearly all races of men, civil- 
ized and savage, there are expectations of a life after 
death ; the more palpable and distinct, perhaps, in uncul- 
tivated men and people, least capable by intellectual 
training of abstract thought. Ideas so consonant to the 

a Job vii., 9, 10. b Eccl. iii., 19, 20. c Keel, ix., 2, 4, 5, 6. 



IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE 215 

human mind as those of immortality and retribution 
Moses seemed to have succeeded in keeping out of the 
minds of his people by their isolation, and by exciting in 
them an antipathy toward a scheme of religion, which, 
while it had failed to make its votaries virtuous, had made 
them oppressors. To maintain this isolation and antipa- 
thy, he stimulated a fierce patriotism, that regarded all 
association with other tribes as an abomination, and all 
their rites and customs as impious. After the Israelites 
lost their national independence and became the allies, 
subjects, and captives of powerful races, among whom the 
sanctions of a future life were powerful incentives to con- 
duct, the isolation could not be maintained ; and the primi- 
tive and eccentric faith took on a popular modification, 
save as it was conserved among the small, intellectual sect 
of the Sadducees. 

Accordingly, in the apocryphal scriptures, which ante- 
dated Jesus but little more than a century, we find dis- 
tinct disclosures of a belief in a life after death, with fates 
for good and evil men according to their moral characters, 
and a confidence in a heaven of everlasting happiness 
strong enough to make men heroic and even exultant 
under the cruellest tortures. When Jesus came, the idea 
among his countrymen of the future condition of the 
human race in an endless heaven or an endless hell, ac- 
cording as they had been approved or condemned by 
God, seemed to be quite as fixed and definite as it is 
to-day. There was a small body of sceptical men, who 
rejected this innovation upon the teaching attributed to 
Moses, whose numbers and influence were less than that 
of the scientific materialists, who with them say to-day 
that there is no resurrection, neither angels nor spirits. 

John the Baptist had spoken of a wrath to come, from 
the doom of which he declared he had not come to warn 
certain Pharisees and Sadducees, that thronged with 
others to demand baptism at his hands. He also an- 
nounced that the axe of judgment was laid at the root of 
every tree, and that every tree, that bringeth not forth 
good fruit, should be hewn down and cast into the fire. 
The Messiah about to come, he announced, would sift 
men like grain, "gathering the wheat into his garner, 
and burning the chaff with unquenchable fire." tt All his 

"Matt, iii., 7, 12. 



2l6 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

message was terrible with the proclamations of vengeance 
and destruction upon a portion of mankind, but whether 
the catastrophe was one which was a part of the general 
order of the divine government, or whether it was a spe- 
cial judgment to accompany the appearance and reign of 
the Messiah, whose kingdom was about to be established, 
can only be conjectured. 

The doctrine of a 'resurrection of the dead and of an 
endless life, in which the good are blessed, and the wicked 
punished or destroyed, whenever taught or alluded to by 
Jesus, did not seem to excite any surprise among his fel- 
low-countrymen. Everything indicates that he was speak- 
ing from ideas generally accepted and understood. The 
question asked, perhaps by a disciple, perhaps by a casual 
listener, and which he condescended to answer literally, 
"Are there few that be saved ?" a evidently implied a con- 
jecture, too intelligible to need any special explanation on 
the part of the narrator, that there was some calamity of 
a grave character impending over the race of men, quite 
other than the casualties of famine and sickness and 
death, from which calamity a saving or exemption, for at 
least a part, was possible. So, too, when the young ruler 
asked, what he should do to inherit eternal life, 1 ' he evi- 
dently had in his mind some good estate in the life to 
come, and not an exemption from death that had befallen 
his fathers, and would in the end befall himself. 

By way of contrasting a system of beliefs, which were 
wholly new to the people before whom they were ex- 
plained, with these teachings of Jesus entirely in accord 
with the popular faith, we have but to recur to the recep- 
tion which Paul met in unfolding to communities of 
Greeks, who, as we know, had not accepted the Phari- 
saic doctrine of a resurrection and judgment and of an 
eternal retribution. To some of the Epicurean and Stoic 
philosophers, who listened to his daily disputations with 
Jews and devout persons in the market-place of Athens, 
he seemed a setter-forth of strange gods, because he 
preached of Jesus and the resurrection. When, after- 
ward, these philosophers brought Paul to the Areopagus, 
and asked him to explain his system of belief, they seem 
to have listened in respectful silence till he came to the 

i Luke xiii., 23. b Luke xviii., 18. 



IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE 217 

assertion, that there would be a general judgment of the 
dead by Jesus, who had himself been raised from the dead; 
and then they broke out in contemptuous derision, — a 
so alien to the cultivated Greek mind was the idea of a 
life after death. Some time later in his career, in Jeru- 
salem, where the teachings of the scribes and Pharisees 
had long given character to the popular ideas, Paul en- 
countered a Jewish mob furiously excited by the suspicion, 
that he had apostatized from the customs of the fathers, 
and had taught the converted Gentiles to forsake Moses ; 
and was in imminent peril of assassination. With won- 
derful self-possession and sagacity, the brave missionary 
threw himself upon the popular sympathy, and fairly 
turned the predominant party in the mob to his side, by 
suddenly crying out : " Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, 
the son of a Pharisee : of the hope and resurrection of the 
dead I am called in question." 15 We see, too, in how 
different an atmosphere we stand, when, leaving the mate- 
rialism of Athens, we come to Cesarea, in Palestine, and 
listen to Cornelius the centurion, who, though a stranger 
from Rome, is a devout man, who has been attracted by 
the simplicity, purity, and grandeur of the Jewish relig- 
ion. When Peter asserts the resurrection of Jesus, and 
that he is a witness to it, Cornelius expresses neither 
doubt nor surprise. In the old literature of the people 
whose faith he had adopted, the resurrection was no 
impossibility. Elijah and Enoch, perhaps Moses, had 
passed into an immortal state without the taint of death. 
It was a destiny none too exalted for such an august 
person as Jesus, the Christ. 

Before examining the doctrines of Jesus himself con- 
cerning a future life, it is desirable to trace further in the 
early Christian literature the contemporary sentiments 
.of his age and country. For it is by no means certain 
that all that the apostles and evangelists wrote upon this 
subject, they wrote upon the authority of their Master; 
nor could they have clone so, unless he told them much 
more than the memorabilia of his life have preserved for 
us. As the doctrine of a state of retribution after death 
is found well developed among, not only the educated, but 
the general people of Judea in the time of Jesus, as the 

"Acts xvii., 17, 18, 32. ''Acts xxiii., 6. '"Acts x., 40-48. 



2l8 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

hints and explanations concerning the future life given by 
him seem to have been received without surprise, dissent, 
or ridicule by those who heard him, — as the same sugges- 
tions evidently were when made known to the enlightened 
Gentiles, — it is fairly inferrible that the writers of the 
New Testament, in what they give us of the doctrine of 
an eternal life, spake as well from the beliefs of their 
time as from the special teaching of Jesus. 

Paul, in writing to the Romans, speaks of a " day of 
wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God," a 
— expressions derived rather from John the Baptist and 
the older prophets than from Jesus. Wicked men, he 
declared, were so made by God, like vessels of wrath 
for destruction, that he might show the glory of his 
mercy on vessels of mercy made for his glory. b Through- 
out his letter, though he professes unbounded reverence 
and worship for his master raised from the dead, and 
speaks of his own commission to preach the gospel, as 
bearing the sanction and testimony of the Holy Ghost, he 
carries us back to the ideas of the Hebrew scriptures, 
and uses illustrations and arguments relevant and con- 
vincing only to those, who shared the modes of thought 
derived from his own training as a Pharisee. 

Writing to the Corinthian church, he declares that 
" the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God" 
and makes the declaration explicit by enumerating the 
classes of evil-doers included in his term "unrighteous." c 
He says he keeps under the lower passions, lest he should 
become a castaway, or one of the lost,' 1 believing, as 
Jesus had taught, that eternal life was the reward of in- 
tense striving. It is a Gentile and not a Jewish church ; 
so quite naturally, even among the converts, there are 
some who do not readily receive the Jewish idea — rather 
the Oriental idea — of a resurrection ; and their doubts he 
sets himself to combat with reasonings which will require 
more than casual examination. In a second letter to the 
same people, he unfolds his faith in these words : " We 
must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that 
every one may receive the things done in his body, ac- 
cording to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." c 

a Romans ii., 5. '> Romans ix., 22, 23. c I. Cor. vi., 9, 10. 
<1 I. Cor. ix., 27. »IL Cor. v., io, 11. 






IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE 2ig 

Knowing this terror, we persuade men to believe. That 
there are those who will be lost he implies in a declara- 
tion that, if his gospel be hidden or unintelligible, it is so 
to them that are lost ; a while he depicts the blessedness 
and reward of the saved in these well-known words : 
" Our light affliction which is but for a moment, worketh 
for us a more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. " b 
" If our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, 
we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, 
eternal in the heavens." c 

In a letter to Philippian converts, Paul conveys the 
belief that inasmuch as only the happy resurrection is at 
all desirable, and to be anticipated otherwise than as a 
terror to the soul, he had labored diligently to acquire 
the virtue of faith in Christ, " if by any means he might 
attain the resurrection of the dead," — that is, the resur- 
rection, which was introductory to a life of blessedness. d 

The second Epistle attributed to Peter speaks of the 
present physical world, including the heavens over it, as 
kept in store by the divine power, reserved unto fire at 
the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men, and 
declares, that the unjust are reserved unto the day of 
judgment to be punished/' 

Regarding the narrative named as John's, as an at- 
tempt to throw into the form of dramatic fiction the mod- 
ified Christian dogma of the second century, it will not 
be pertinent to examine it for indications of the common 
opinions of the contemporaries of Jesus in regard to a 
future life. But even the novelist takes some pains to 
attribute to his characters only such opinions as they 
were believed to hold, and the literary excellence of this 
wholly legitimate fiction has justly earned for it the 
celebrity and confidence it has ever maintained in the 
world. Indeed, it is its literary excellence, mainly exem- 
plified in the vividness of its descriptions, truth to life 
of its impersonations, and felicitousness of its conversa- 
tions, that have gained for this marvellous production a 
regard that unfriendly criticism has not been able to 
destroy. So when Martha says to Jesus, who on meeting 
her had told her, " Thy brother shall rise again" " I know 

• II. Cor. iv., 3. 1»H. Cor. iv., 17. II. Cor. v., 1. 

d Phil, iii., 8-1 1. •!!. Pet. iii., 7. 



220 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF [ESUS 

that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last 
day," a it is apparent that the writer has skilfully imputed 
to a commonplace person — one not in the intimate confi- 
dence of Jesus, so as to reflect his thought — an opinion 
which was the prevalent opinion of her country and her 
time. 

Reviewing these citations from the early Christian lit- 
erature taken mostly from Paul,' whose mind seems to 
have been singularly destitute of impressions attributable 
to the personal influence of Jesus — whom he had never 
seen — the conclusion is fairly forced upon us that the 
Christian dogma concerning a future life, and the distri- 
bution of its fates to good and bad men, substantially the 
same as it has been held throughout the Christian era, 
came to its maturity independently of the teaching of 
Jesus. 

Following our inquiry, we are now ready to examine 
the words imputed to Jesus, setting forth his ideas of a 
future life, its incidents, its duration, and the permanence 
of its conditions. The Persians believed that there was 
a judicial separation made between good and evil men 
after death, — the former to be received into bliss, the 
latter to be consigned to torture. In the Egyptian 
scheme of the future fates of men, the day of judgment 
was a most prominent feature. Before the stupendous 
doom to heaven or to hell was pronounced, each human 
soul submitted to a searching inquest into its deeds, 
motives, and character: so that the justice of the final 
sentence was conspicuously exhibited before the attend- 
ant spirits of all men, and to the conscience of the per- 
son himself upon trial. When the Jews modified their 
own creed and against the protest of the more strict and 
orthodox disciples of Moses, admitted the fearful sanc- 
tions drawn from a life after death, they, too, had a judg- 
ment, and, as we have already seen, a day of judgment, 
which so awed their minds by its solemnity, that it came 
to be spoken of in literature, and doubtless in their 
common speech, as that day. Their prophet Daniel had 
told them of the kingdom of the world arrayed against 
the kingdom of the saints of the most high God, but that, 
after a time of glory and success permitted to them by 

a John xi., 23, 24. 



IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE 221 

God, the judgment should sit, and the dominion should 
pass to the saints, who should reign forever. a 

Following the popular language, Jesus, in closing his 
first discourse on the mount, declared : " Many will say 
to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in 
thy name ? and in thy' name have cast out devils ? and in 
thy name done many wonderful works ? And then will 
I profess unto them, I never knew you : depart from me, 
ye that work iniquity." b So searching should be the 
inquisition into character on that day, that not only the 
ostensibly wicked should be in imminent peril, but even 
many, who had acknowledged him as master, and drawn 
from the association power to do wonderful works, should 
find their claim to be his elect publicly disavowed, when 
the disavowal meant their everlasting destruction. 

Afterward he told his twelve disciples, whom he sent 
out to proclaim the near approach of the kingdom of 
heaven, that the cities that refused to hear that message 
and to receive them, should receive in the day of judg- 
ment less lenient consideration than Sodom and Gomor- 
rah, anciently destroyed by fire for the excesses and bes- 
tiality of their licentiousness. c Indignant at the indiffer- 
ence of the people of two cities, Chorazin and Bethsaida 
neighboring to Nazareth, his birthplace, and to Caper- 
naum his home, to the mighty works he had done in their 
sight, he declared, that it should be in the day of judg- 
ment more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon — wicked cities 
of the heathen, which had perished, as it was believed, 
for their sins — than for them. And his own Capernaum, 
exalted to heaven in the privilege of being his home, 
should in the day of judgment fare worse for its con- 
tempt of him than Sodom itself.' 1 

In explanation of the parable of the tares and the wheat, 
to his questioning disciples he announced, that, at the end 
of the world, " the Son of Man shall send forth his angels 
and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that 
offend, and them which do iniquity ; and shall cast them 
into a furnace of fire : there shall be wailing and gnashing 
of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun, 
in the kingdom of their Father." The same segrega- 

« Dan. vii., 25-27. b Matt, vii., 22, 23. c Matt, x., 15. 

'I Matt. xi. ( 22, 24. «Matt. xiii., 4»~43. 49> 50. 



222 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

tion of the wicked and their destruction was typified 
by his parable of the good and bad fish as explained by 
himself. On another occasion, when announcing that 
the Son of Man would come in his kingdom before the 
death of some that heard him, he said, " The Son of Man 
shall come in the glory of his Father and with his angels ; 
and then he shall reward every man according to his 
works." a 

Answering his disciples, who had asked him for the 
signs of his coming, and of the end of the world, he ex- 
plained, that he would " send his angels, with a great 
sound of a trumpet ; and they shall gather together his 
elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the 
other." b It was doubtless these remembered words of 
the master that fixed in the minds of the disciples an 
incident of the judgment, of which they felt a strong 
assurance. Paul, depicting with glowing fancy the details 
of the general resurrection, seems to be treading on 
firmer ground, when he insists in emphatic parenthesis : 
"For the trumpet shall sound" c He assures the Thessa- 
lonians also that the unmistakable signal of the great 
crisis will be "the trump of God!' & Further on in the 
same discourse, Jesus gives a graphic picture of the great 
judgment itself, himself sitting by the divine appointment 
upon a glorious throne, with an attendant multitude of 
holy angels, and all the nations of mankind gathered 
before him for judgment and separation. He even gives 
their treatment of himself and of his disciples and ad- 
herents as the test which is to be applied in that stupen- 
dous proceeding to determine the ultimate condition of 
all souls. e 

It is a habit of modern thought to speak of the condi- 
tion of the dead as one of happiness and blessedness, at 
least of rest. From this cheerful expectation, only a few 
criminals and wicked men, dying suddenly in the very 
flagrancy of their sin, are excepted ; and even these, when 
they have expressed some contrition for their evil lives, 
or have been moved by the fear of death to some words 
or feelings of devotion, are let into the good condition, 
in which the general dead are contemplated. Jesus does 

a Matt, xvi., 27. •> Matt, xxiv., 31. cl. Cor. xv., 52. 

'1 1. Thess. iv., 16. e Matt, xxv., 31-46. 



IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE 223 

not seem to have shared this feeling, or to have uttered a 
word upon which such vague hopes for the well-being of 
the ordinary dead can be based. He plainly taught that 
salvation was discriminate, and by no means universal. 
Not all the invited would be received as guests at the 
banquet of everlasting life. Many were called : few were 
chosen." In sending calamities upon the world, particu- 
larly those calamities that precede and forebode the end of 
the world, he declared God had no consideration for the 
sufferings and terrors of mankind in general. But for 
the sake of his chosen ones he would destroy all flesh ; 
and only for his elect's sake, who to some extent must 
share the terrors of the rejected ones, would he shorten 
the period of distress. The Son of Man, coming as 
judge, avenger, and ruler, would send his messengers 
throughout the world to gather together his elect; for 
only an angelic intelligence can detect those delicate 
shades of character, which mark the favor that had 
chosen certain men for salvation. 5 To the common obser- 
vation, these two men working together in the field, those 
two women grinding together in the mill, are alike. The 
judgment of the world has made no distinction between 
them. But God has chosen one man and one woman to 
the honor of an eternal life, and left the other man and 
the other woman to shame and everlasting contempt. 
What availed the afterthought of the foolish virgins ? 
They were never reckoned among the wedding guests. 
The lord of the feast said unto them at last, "/ do not 
know you.'" d The distinctions between all nations of men 
of elect and non-elect, he declared, were as palpable to the 
divine eye, as was the shepherd's perception that he had 
both sheep and goats in his flock ; and he could place the 
bad upon his left hand as easily as the shepherd could 
separate the sheep from the goats. 6 He told his hearers 
not to commiserate the fate of certain Galileans, whom 
Herod had murdered in the midst of their worship, or 
those others who had been killed by the fall of a tower, 
for without repentance they would perish, referring of 
course not to a death by a like casualty — which was most 
improbable — but to the perishing of all the unrepentant 
in the after-world. l 

a Matt, xx., 16; xxii., 14. •> Matt, xxiv., 22, 30, 31. c Matt, xxiv., 40, 41. 
<1 Matt, xxv., 1-13. v Matt, xxv., 32. f Luke xiii., 3, 5. 



224 OPINIONS -VXD CHARACTER OF JESUS 

All literal exposition of his serious thought, as well 
as the figurative and poetic imagery, in which he sought 
to illustrate and convey it, depict the fate of ordinary 
men as baleful; and the rescue of any as a favor con- 
ferred by his procurement upon those whom he chose, 
either on account of their intrinsic excellence, or on 
account of their penitence, or on account of their faith 
in him. If this law of discrimination is found uncertain, 
it is an uncertainty due to the varying character of his 
own utterances. This much, however, is obvious. The 
exemption from the calamities that impended over man- 
kind was not indiscriminate, nor was it to be exercised 
toward the mass of men. 

He charged his followers to wait for his coming again 
in the terrific glories of his everlasting kingdom, abstain- 
ing from drunkenness and sensuality, and from absorp- 
tion in the cares of business; "for as a snare shall [the 
day] come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole 
earth." a His coming, though with power and great glory, 
was to be an event at which all the tribes of the earth 
should mourn. His disciples once asked him — evidently 
prompted to the question by the sombre tenor of his own 
speculations upon the future life — " Are there few that 
be saved ?" b and he said: "Strive to enter in at the 
strait gate ; for many will seek to enter in, and shall 
not be able." He also declared that the road to destruc- 
tion was broad, and many walked in it. Few found the 
narrow road leading to life ; c and these few were sharply 
interrogated at the gate, and some, who supposed them- 
selves disciples and even did mighty works in the name 
of Jesus — some of the very train of friends who watched 
all night for the bridegroom's coming — were either pub- 
licly repudiated as workers of iniquity/ or, coming too 
late, and after the master of the house had impatiently 
risen, and shut the door, were driven away, because their 
repentance had come too late. e 

Seeking to know what was the idea of Jesus as to the 
condition of the non-elect dead, in what their misery con- 
sisted, and what was its duration, we must try to gather 
the implications of these words of his : " It is better for 

"Luke xxi., 34, 35. b Luke xiii., 23-25. c Matt, vii., 13, 14. 

dMatt. vii., 21-23. eMatt. xxv., 10; Luke xiii., 25. 



IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE 225 

thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having 
two hands, or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire." a 
" His Lord was wroth, and delivered him — the unforgiv- 
ing debtor — to the tormentors, till he should pay all that 
was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father 
do unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one 
his brother his trespasses." b " He will miserably destroy 
those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other 
husbandmen." "On whomsoever it — the rejected stone, 
himself — shall fall, it will grind him to powder." d "Bind 
hand and foot — the unwelcome guest at the marriage 
feast — and cast him into outer darkness ; there shall be 
weeping and gnashing of teeth." e "Ye serpents, ye gen- 
eration of vipers — addressed to the scribes and Phari- 
sees at Jerusalem — how can ye escape the damnation 
of hell?" f 

Most of these images are images of destruction and 
death. The rejected of Jesus are spoken of as the lost 
in distinction from the saved. The evidently literal and 
solemn sentence, that concludes the grand assize of *the 
judgment as depicted by Jesus, "These shall go away 
into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life 
eternal," B does not necessarily imply the conscious exist- 
ence of the punished. The contrasted condition of life 
everlasting is an ever continuous death, — a death from 
which there shall be no resuscitation or resurrection. Even 
the figure of fire, by which the horror of hell is so often set 
forth, brings to our apprehension an element of destruc- 
tion. The duration is affirmed of the fire : it burns per- 
petually ; it is not quenched ; it is not cooled ; it is not 
removed ; but it destroys effectually and forever what is 
cast into it. In one conversation, it is plainly implied that 
only the good, the elected, experience resurrection, the 
rest of the human race being consumed, as to whatever 
there is of their physical and spiritual identity, in the 
conflagration of the world; and that is the conversation 
held with the Sadducees, as to the manner of the resur- 
rection. " They wJiich shall be accounted worthy to 
obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, 

"Matt, xviii., 8, 9. b Matt, xviii., 34, 35. c Matt, xxi., 41. 
d Matt. Jtxi., 44. e Matt, xxii., 13. I Matt, xxiii., 33. 

sMatt. xxv., 46. 



226 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

neither marry nor are given in marriage." 11 But other 
figures less frequent bring before us a picture of con- 
scious and continuous suffering. Six different times, in 
speaking of the doom of rejected men at the judgment, 
Jesus added this delineation of the horror of their condi- 
tion : "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth," 1 ' 
— a fearful image of vain sorrow and impotent rage. 

It is not surprising that the prevalent conception of a 
hell of conscious and acute and perpetual suffering finds 
sanction and authority in language as vigorous and ter- 
rible as this. And such has been the conception of 
Christendom with scarce a protest or dissent for nearly 
nineteen centuries. Hell has been modified and allevi- 
ated in our own age, not by the spirit of historic Chris- 
tianity, not by the teachings of the primitive disciples, or 
what the world has preserved of the teachings of their 
master, but by the spirit of modern civilization. That 
enlarged humanity, which takes heed of the woes, wants, 
and sufferings of men, of the enslaved, the overworked, 
the Oppressed, the sick, the insane, and the bereft of the 
faculties of sense, has carried forward its benevolent feel- 
ing to the conditions of a future life, and insisted that the 
inexorable and dreadful fate of the masses of mankind 
shall be made more tolerable to a rational contemplation 
of the providence of God. To be entirely true to the 
influence of Jesus, let it rather be said that the intolerable 
hell of the Christian creed, which is also the hell of the 
thought of Jesus and of his age, has succumbed, so far as 
it has succumbed, to a spirit born of the early teachings 
of Jesus, his sublime doctrine of the fatherhood of God, 
and of the perfection of his love, which flows forth to the 
unkind and unthankful, the evil as well as the good, 
before he had himself retracted these utterances under 
the disturbing and ambitious presentiment of his destiny 
to be the Son of Man, that was to come in the clouds 
of heaven, to receive dominion, glory, and the kingdom 
over all people, nations, and languages. 

There are two sources of the surmises and speculations, 
which the reflecting portion of mankind have entertained 
concerning the prolongation of the individual life after 

"Luke xx., 35. bMatt. viii., 12; xiii., 42, 50; xxii., 13; xxiv., 51; xxv., 30. 
eDan.vii.,13,14. 



IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE 227 

death, — tradition and imagination. We have taken what 
other men have believed concerning an existence beyond 
the grave, and believed it upon their credit ; and we have 
enlarged and developed these ideas by the powers of our 
own imagination. It is not certain that these traditions 
have any other basis than the imagination of some highly 
impressible person or persons, in whose minds the con- 
ception first took form, and who were so overawed and 
impressed by it, that they accepted it as an intuition or 
revelation, and so proclaimed it as a truth of the deepest 
significance and importance. It is not certain that such 
impressions may not have proceeded in some inexplica- 
ble way from a divine, angelic or superhuman communica- 
tion. There has ever been a tendency in the mind of 
man to impute to inspiration his best and most sponta- 
neous thoughts, those flashes of cognition, those feats of 
artistic performance, into which he has put the least con- 
scious effort. The philosopher, upon whom falls some 
instantaneous solution of a law or process of nature, the 
moralist, who has embodied in a maxim of universal valid- 
ity a law of conduct, the poet, who in the frenzy of an 
intellectual passion has expressed in musical and eloquent 
language a great thought, and the painter or sculptor, 
upon whose brain an image of ideal beauty is suddenly 
projected — in the modesty of nature, in the mystery 
which hides the methods of our highest mental activities, 
in that exaggerated, maternal admiration for intellectual 
progeny, which accompanies birth, have ever been ready 
to impute the origin of a work so surpassing the scale 
of ordinary achievement to something above themselves. 
It is the muse, they say ; it is the demon ; it is an angel 
or a God speaking. 

But such is not the necessary solution of the origin of 
the traditions of a future life. We are not only capable 
of conceiving of a continuance of our consciousness after 
death, but it is the obvious, natural, and necessary con- 
ception. Indeed, as has been before stated, it is impos- 
sible for a living mind to master the idea of a cessation 
of consciousness, that being a condition of which it has 
not and cannot have any experience. Hence, it follows 
that the belief in continuous existence has been nearly 
universal among mankind ; and was quite as vivid and 



22S OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

definite among people, whose lives antedated the whole 
epoch of what is called divine revelation, as it is among 
the most Christianized nations of the present age. All 
pictures of states of reward and punishment, which are 
preserved in the books and traditions of the great relig- 
ions of the world, betray their human origin, in that they 
are conditions of human experience projected on the dark 
wall that separates the dead from the living. The feasts, 
the harps, the singing, the society, the worship, the rest, 
the ecstasy of heaven, are all images of the clearest and 
purest joys we have known in our experience, or observed 
or imagined in the experience of more favored men. 
The fires, the tortures, the mourning, and grinding of 
teeth, are projections of the miserable experiences of a 
world, whose manifold sufferings have never been able to 
make it less sensitive to suffering. To a certain extent, 
we can indulge our imaginations in the hopes and fears, 
which those anticipations beget. We can give such de- 
tails to these surmises as our experiences can furnish us 
with, and we strive in vain to press beyond these limits. 
Why should we believe that our fathers, our ancestors, 
the men of earlier ages, could do any more ? All that we 
have received from them is very like what we may con- 
jecture upon the same data. 

What we know of astronomy, of chemistry, of physi- 
ology, we have learned by studying phenomena, and by 
accepting the results of the studies and experiments of 
men, in whose judgments and good faith we have confi- 
dence. What we think we know of a future life, do we 
know on any other authority? Nay, is not this science in 
a more primitive and incomplete stage — the same stage 
as when, during the Middle Ages, our fathers were grop- 
ing blindly in the departments of medicine and astrology 
among theories that had no basis but tradition or assump- 
tion? They had neither the trained faculty nor the logical 
method correctly to note the operations of nature, nor to 
comprehend its laws. Those pseudo-sciences had even 
this advantage, — that their principles could be confirmed 
by plausible experiments. The sick sometimes got well 
in spite of irrational therapeutics ; and now and then the 
fortunes of men conformed to their vague, astrologic fore- 
casting. No instance, however, has been given, in which 



IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE 229 

the momentous revelations relating to a life after death 
have been attested to by any intelligence, that has returned 
hither from that country, to which such a concourse have 
migrated. Our situation is not unlike that of the people of 
the Eastern hemisphere in reference to America, before its 
discovery by Europeans. There were oracular and poetic 
revelations of an Atlantis ; and philosophy was beginning 
to speculate that the globe must be balanced by a conti- 
nent upon its dark side ; but no voyager had returned 
from it, and nothing known to be its product, whether of 
living man or animal or the works of either, of shrub or 
tree or fruit, had come across the ocean to confirm its 
existence. So, now, philosophy may say : to round out 
our human life, to balance the unjust and unequal condi- 
tions of human existence, there must be a life beyond — a 
world of retribution, compensation, and completion. The 
universal instinct of the soul of man cannot be mistaken 
or denied, that has in all ages refused to believe that 
death is the end, and that the earthly discipline of suf- 
fering, by which the race has been raised from bestiality 
to intelligence and a capacity for disinterested benevo- 
lence, could have been expended upon a result so trivial 
as the transient life of men. 

From a careful perusal of the authentic words of Jesus, 
it is not fairly to be inferred that he approached the prob- 
lem of a life after death in any other method than in the 
human and philosophical method. But when the Chris- 
tian thinkers of the first centuries adopted the theory, 
that the resurrection was a new process in the divine 
economy, a new law of nature introduced by Jesus him- 
self, a consummation, in the divine order, that had awaited 
his coming and his conquest of death — which, till his time, 
had ruled over the race of men from the beginning 11 — it 
was natural that they should seek to support it by his own 
declarations. Paul first gave striking expression to this 
theory in his well-known words, in which he speaks of 
Jesus, as of him " who has abolished death, and brought 
life and immortality to light." The world had a right to 
require of a being sent from God with such a commission, 
that he should speak from his own knowledge of the 
stupendous concerns of the heavenly state, whence he had 
been sent. 

<i Romans v., 12-21. 



23O OPINION'S AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

The Fourth Gospel, evidently the product of a time not 
only after the Pauline conception had been published, 
but after the considerably later time, when it had become 
incorporated into the faith of the Church, fairly met this 
requirement, and may well have been written to meet it. 
The Johannic Jesus speaks familiarly of his own pre- 
vious existence as an immortal and divine being, of the 
heavenly state, which he left to take upon himself a 
m.-rtal, human nature, of his fellowship with God, and of 
the relations of rank, dependence, and affection, which 
subsisted between them. He flashes upon us glimpses of 
the condition of the happy dead. 

The Jesus of John tells his disciples, that they should 
see heaven opened, and angels of God descending upon 
himself and returning from him to heaven." He says 
he was sent into the world from God, his Father, to 
save those who should believe on him. b He assures the 
Pharisees that he had lived before Abraham, the vener- 
able ancestor of their race. Everywhere throughout the 
Fourth Gospel, Jesus speaks in perfect harmony with this 
claim to have been the companion and equal of God, of 
whose existence there had been no beginning. All that 
he tells of God, all of the unknown past or the unknown 
future of man, he tells as a revelation from the sphere of 
a complete and divine intelligence. All that he confides 
of the conditions of the eternal life he communicates at 
first-hand, and from a personal experience. He tells Nico- 
demus directly, that he spoke what he knew, and testi- 
fied what he had seen. "Why," he asked him, "shall I 
tell you, as I might, of heavenly things, when you are in- 
credulous of the earthly things I have told you?"' 1 And 
this knowledge, from which he spoke, was exclusive and 
peculiar; "for no man," he added, "hath ascended up to 
heaven, but he that came clown from heaven, even the 
Son of Man, which is in heaven." He said at another 
time that such was the love of God toward himself, that 
all the divine counsels were shared with him, and in order 
that all men might honor the Son, the Father had deferred 
to him the authority of being the judge of mankind. 
When Martha spoke to him at the grave of Lazarus of 

•John i., 51. bjohniii., 16, 17. cjohn viii., 58, 

djohniii., 11-13, e John v., 20-23. 



IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE 23 1 

the hope which she, as a pious Pharisee, had, that her 
brother would rise at the resurrection of the last day, 
Jesus interrupts her with impressive warmth : " The res- 
urrection ! I am the resurrection : he that believeth in 
me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whoso- 
ever liveth and believeth in me shall never die ! " a He 
had told the Jews on another occasion, that, "if a man 
keep my saying, he shall never see death." h As he had 
spoken of his birth as his coming from God, so he spoke 
of his death as going back to him ; and in a conversation 
memorable for its pathos, and dear to the human heart 
for the hopes it has fed, he gives this picture of the 
heavenly state to which on leaving the world he expected 
to return : "In my Father's house are many mansions : if 
it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a 
place for you." c 

Although he sometimes betrays the inventive character 
of his work, through faults of style and exhibitions of a 
moral culture, far below the grade of Jesus, the author 
carries out with admirable completeness his dramatic 
purpose. Jesus, though he sometimes demeans himself 
in his methods of expression, is always true to the r61e 
assigned to him of a divine pre-existent and immortal 
being ; and, when he is made to speak of the conditions 
of a heavenly existence, he speaks as a revelator rather 
than a reasoner. He does not grope his way, as men do, 
in the darkness of an impenetrable mystery. He nar- 
rates with the confidence of knowledge, and testifies with 
the positive assurance of an eye-witness. He is Colum- 
bus, after his return from his first voyage, telling with 
details too natural and minute to be fancied the sights he 
has seen, and confirming everything by the testimony of 
his companions, and by specimens of men and things 
brought back from new discovered lands ; whereas every 
other revelation of the unseen world is Columbus before 
his voyage, with his traditions of early navigators, his 
theories of a compensating continent and a round and 
bounded earth, over which all but the enthusiastic shake 
their heads. 

Now, it is just this character of positiveness, this 
directness of communication as of an eye-witness, that 

■ John m., .• \-.:',. '■ John viii., 51. John xiv., 2. 



232 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

the disclosures of Jesus in the more reliable biographies 
lack. There is a vivid picture of the great judgment, 
there is a perpetual allusion to a great separation and 
segregation of mankind into two classes, sometimes of 
righteous and wicked, sometimes as elect and non-elect, 
sometimes as believers and unbelievers — with the cate- 
gory of the former generously enlarged, so as to include 
those who had sincerely, and out of consideration for him- 
self, done even trifling services to his followers, or only 
not opposed them — to which classes widely different fates 
are assigned. But there are no details of the joys and 
glories of heaven, and only brief, striking, and terrifying 
epithets to indicate the horrors of hell. If Jesus knew at 
first-hand, and from a pre-existent experience, of which 
the scenes of an invisible world were familiar data, a wise 
reticence might have restrained his disclosures. On any 
other consideration, we are left to the conclusion, that 
some men who had preceded him, and many who have 
followed him, have taken far higher flights into the sub- 
lime regions of devout fancy than Jesus was capable of, 
or than he allowed himself to indulge in. This is by no 
means to be said in disparagement of his genius or his 
wisdom. The Egyptian and Persian day of judgment, 
with its searching inquisition into character and into the 
very springs of voluntary conduct, impressed the people, 
who lived in hourly anticipation of it, more powerfully 
than the meagre glimpses of the same stupendous pro- 
cedure furnished in the words of Jesus impressed the 
minds of his auditors. It is Paul, who, modifying and re- 
applying the words of an ancient prophecy, has given 
for the consolation of Christendom those fascinating reve- 
lations, so full of a soothing hope in what they declare 
as in what they withhold : " Eye hath not seen, nor ear 
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the 
things which God hath prepared for them that love him."' 1 
It is the inspired imagination of Paul, that bequeaths this 
picture, like an heirloom of faith, to the world : " For we 
know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were 
dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made 
with hands, eternal in the heavens." b Indeed, when now 
we stand, as mankind have always stood, dismayed and 

»I. Cor. ii., 9. 1>II. Cor. v., i. 



IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE 233 

appalled at that chasm of death into which has just fallen 
some fellow-creature — it may be linked to us by ties which 
it is a long agony to sunder — and beat our aching hearts 
against the impenetrable wall, that separates him from 
our ken, it is to Paul rather than to Jesus that we resort 
for consolation. We read at the open grave Paul's argu- 
ment for immortality. He, too, claimed no special revela- 
tion or knowledge. Like Plato, like Cicero, he reasons 
out the problem of a life after death upon such data as 
his mind was furnished with. He confesses himself, he 
has staked the whole question upon the physical resurrec- 
tion of the body of Jesus after his crucifixion and burial, 
an incident which even a part of the twelve apostles at 
the time doubted to have happened, and which philoso- 
phy can only accept as something outside of the order of 
nature. Corollary to this confidence is the analogy de- 
rived from the generation of plants from buried seeds, in 
which the fervid advocate fails to observe intelligently, 
when he declares with warmth that no seed can germinate 
till it die, whereas it is well known, to even unscientific 
persons, that no seed, that has parted with its life, can 
germinate." 

But, whatever the analogy of vegetable reproduction 
may imply or require, it is all fulfilled in the generation 
of living progeny, not from dead but from living parents, 
by processes of reproduction which the laws of botany 
and physiology, wholly unknown in the age of Paul, have 
indicated to be substantially alike in vegetables and 
animals. But it was not to examine Paul's philosophy 
of a resurrection, but to indicate that, with his creative 
fancy, Paul allowed himself to dally boldly with the the- 
ories of a future life, made present daily to his anticipa- 
tion by a perilous mission which exposed him to daily 
death. The Christian imagination has certainly imposed 
no restraint upon itself in that direction, since, from 
Paul's time to the present the elaboration of the scenes 
of the final judgment, pictures of the employments, de- 
lights, and associations of the happy dead, and details of 
the sufferings and the wretchedness of the lost, have been 
themes to invite the supreme effort of the genius of the 
poet, and which the preacher and moralist have chiefly 



234 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

relied upon as the terror of the Lord, to win men to re- 
pentance and piety. Indeed so productive have been the 
intellectual labors of mankind through the Christian cen- 
turies in this dread but fascinating field of inquiry, that 
the heaven and the hell of the popular faith with their 
furniture and incidents are not derived so much from the 
scriptures of religions, as from the conceptions of Dante, 
Milton, and Robert Pollok — an English poet whose repu- 
tation is confined to a strictly theological public. 

Now, going back to our annals of Jesus, we find him 
repeating the traditions of his forefathers ; and we can 
reasonably infer whence they were derived, without 
enriching or enlarging them with a single product of his 
own creative faculty. In Luke, he is represented as 
holding a colloquy with the Sadducees, who thought that 
a woman several times married to brothers of each other 
who had died would be embarrassed by a relation, the 
nature of which was exclusive, if all the husbands should 
at once assert their marital claims. The answer of Jesus 
was ready, if not quite complete. "There is no marrying 
nor giving in marriage in heaven," he said. But this did 
not quite meet the point. It was not a relation that was 
to be, but one that had been. Undoubtedly, Jesus meant 
to say, not only is there no marrying in heaven, but no 
recognition of any marriage, that had been on earth. 
The relation was earthly; and belonged to the necessities 
of an earthly order. In the resurrection, all will be as 
the angels. Husbands will not be the husbands of their 
wives, nor children of their fathers, nor fathers of their 
children — for all this is implied in the denial of the 
fundamental relation of human life — and individuals will 
hold relations to each other of affection, of service, of 
precedence, not based upon priority of birth or participa- 
tion in parentage, but upon the laws of that life, as those 
Other relations are built upon the laws of the human life." 

So far, the answer was complete — an extinguishment 
of the Sadducees, and a philosophical statement that will 
stand the criticism of all sceptics, that may come after 
them. But he went on to add that even Moses showed 
that the dead are raised, when he called God the God of 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob : for God is not a God of the 



IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE 235 

dead, but of the living : for all live unto him. It is not 
easy to see how God is not the God, as well of the dead, 
as of the living, since all are in his power ; and since 
another scripture has declared : If I make my bed in the 
grave, God is even there. Nor would the declaration to 
Moses in any ingenuous mind imply anything but that 
God, who had in their lifetime befriended and blessed 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for their faith would befriend 
and bless Moses for his trust in him. So far from imply- 
ing that the patriarchs were still alive, its impressiveness 
would largely spring from the fact that they were dead, 
that their record was complete, and that no after calamity 
could change their happy human lot. But what is 
remarkable about the argument is that, just as Paul was 
laboriously working out the solution of his great hope, 
by observing the analogies of vegetable reproduction, 
and by assuring himself that the crucified Jesus had 
been seen alive by five hundred disciples, many of them 
then living, and by himself on his way to Damascus, 
so Jesus was laboring to find in a scripture, not obviously 
implying such a thing, and in a declaration to the first 
prophet of his people — who certainly made no such infer- 
ence from it himself — the ground of faith in what he had 
no first knowledge of, and nothing but his hopes and 
reliance upon tradition to support. It may be said the 
argument, subtle as it was, was apposite to the scepticism 
of his questioners, who only had faith in Moses, and to 
whom the words of Moses were divine oracles. This 
is doubtless true, and would be a complete answer to 
the objection, if Jesus had anywhere else, in teaching 
the doctrine of a resurrection, unfolded any positive 
grounds of a knowledge of a life after death. Besides, 
from men whose genius and insight place them in the 
order of Socrates, Pythagoras, Confucius, and Zoroaster, 
we have a right to expect something more comprehensive 
than an answer which is a mere argument to the man and 
to the verbal form of the qliestion, — an answer good for all 
time, and that shall be valid from every point of view. 
To avoid being entangled in a sophistical dilemma shows 
resources of wit ; to discover a great truth in the data of 
nature shows resources of wisdom. 

Finally, the investigation leads back to the dominant 



236 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

idea of Jesus of an end of the world, a separation of the 
saved and the lost, a reign of himself as Messiah over the 
former, and the destruction or perpetual punishment of 
the latter. Of the day of judgment, of heaven and hell, 
Jesus thought and taught less than is taught in several of 
the older religions, less than his apostles and the poets 
and preachers of the Christian Church. He took up the 
prevalent beliefs upon these subjects, and modified them 
by his own grand idea of the impending kingdom of 
heaven. The end of the world will be presently : the 
resurrection I shall myself first achieve, and bring back 
with me to life those thought worthy. The judgment 
implies the judge, which I, the Son of Man, am; and 
heaven is the kingdom of my Father, in which I shall sit 
down with all whom I have chosen in an endless life. 
Jesus gave definiteness and date to what men had hoped 
or dreaded of a future life, and the words he uttered with 
emphasis and staked his whole veracity upon were these, 
which each evangelist repeats: " Verily, I say unto yon, 
This generation shall not pass away till all these things be 
fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words 
shall not pass away." 



CHAPTER IX. 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES. 

" In truth, the world has become mistrustful, and does not believe things 
till it has seen them." — Pascal. 

"At the stage of experience where men are now arrived, it is evident, to 
whoever looks at things fairly, that the miraculous data of the Bible have 
not the unique character of trustworthiness; that they, like other such 
data, proceed from a medium of imperfect observation and boundless cre- 
dulity." — Matthew Arnold. 

Hitherto, the only difficulty that has beset this inves- 
tigation of the historic data concerning Jesus has been the 
uncertainty of knowledge, springing out of the contradic- 
tory declarations that seem to be imputed to him by the 
most trustworthy of his biographers, leaving to us the 
alternative of questioning the accuracy of the reports, or 
of believing that he was either careless to maintain opin- 
ions in harmony with each other, or that in some crisis 
of his life he changed his views and modified his teach- 
ings accordingly. But a very large part of the narratives 
named of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are taken up with 
transactions, which, though they evidently impressed the 
writers as most important, are entirely outside of the 
probabilities that avouch ordinary events. In a sincere 
quest for truth, no one is bound to believe these transac- 
tions upon anything less than the strong, cumulative, and 
accordant testimony of intelligent and credible persons. 
The miracles come under this category. 

What is here said upon a theme so much discussed 
needs no statement or even implication of a theory. 
Whether the laws of nature are mathematically and 
invariably uniform, whether a divine agency by which the 
visible world exists and is controlled may or may not 
inject into nature other methods of activity than those 
which mankind have concurrently observed, need not be 
even considered. All that need be assumed is that men 
have not hitherto been able to walk upon the sea; to mul- 



238 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

tiply five loaves of bread and two small fishes, so that they 
shall feed to repletion five thousand men with an uneaten 
surplus far exceeding the original supply ; nor to instantly 
restore to health and wholeness by a word a maimed or 
diseased person, whose infirmity was due to other cause 
than some hysterical or nervous defect in the apparatus 
connecting volition and action ; nor by similar means to 
bring back to life a man, who, having been some hours 
dead, was being borne to his burial ; nor to do several 
other wonderful things that Jesus is related to have done 
habitually and without apparent effort. If Jesus did such 
acts, it is proper to require that the fact be attested by 
the serious, if not sworn, testimony of intelligent persons 
of integrity, given with all the solemnity and sense of 
responsibility of judicial proceedings. The different 
statements of those persons should substantially agree, 
differing only in those details and circumstances, about 
which it is always impossible for even careful and consci- 
entious witnesses to agree. 

It is not intended to approach in any flippant or irrev- 
erent spirit the inquiry into these claims for the founder 
of the Christian religion to have been gifted with super- 
human powers. Indeed, the propriety must be obvious to 
every one of treating with respect and consideration what 
a great majority of the best and most cultivated minds 
have believed and still believe. 

It has been already explained why we are compelled 
to accept Jesus as a veritable person of history ; and the 
purpose of this writing is to work out, feature by feature, 
the details of his character and his actions, with a view 
of justly estimating his weight and worth. Thus far, the 
task has proceeded by considering the progress of history 
as generally uniform and natural, by regarding the men of 
the first century as men of "like passions and like infir- 
mities with ourselves, and by applying purely human judg- 
ments to declarations and conduct not presumably outside 
the influence of human motives. The result has been the 
dim outlines at least of a remarkable, highly endowed, 
and heroic soul, self-confident, self-sustained, mainly con- 
sistent with his own ideal, and pressing forward to death 
amid opposition and danger in the achievement of a high 
destiny, which he believed appointed for him, but at the 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 239 

same time a human soul sensitive to reproach, eager for 
appreciation, and saddened by the limitations with which 
human nature on every hand confronted his inspirations. 
In the same spirit, and by the same method, let this 
assertion of the power to work miracles be examined. 
What do the most reliable documents say, what do they 
omit to say ? How do their statements harmonize with 
each other ? The earliest and most authentic Christian 
documents are conceded by scholars to be the epistles of 
Paul. Paul is a witness of eminent credibility and respect 
among his compeers. Born in Tarsus in Cilicia, while it 
was a province of Rome, and by that birth entitled to the 
consideration and privileges of a Roman citizen, he was 
in nationality and religion a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and 
betook himself to Jerusalem, the sacred city of his race, 
to be brought up there at the feet of one of its most cele- 
brated Rabbis in the strictest principles of Pharisaism. 
He bore the name of the first king of his nation, in the 
early period of its independence and glory, selected from 
his own tribe of Benjamin. But he was compromising 
and politic enough to change his name to a familiar and 
distinguished Roman protonym, or else, when the change 
had been made by his acquaintance, readily to adopt it. 
He was the first considerable convert the new faith had 
made among the class of cultivated men of the world ; 
and to his conversion it seems fairly due, that Chris- 
tianity did not survive save as a secondary Jewish schism. 
When Stephen, the first martyr, was stoned to death for 
preaching the faith of Jesus in Jerusalem, Paul, who was 
an active leader in the violence, was called a young man, 
but as he styles himself in his letter to Philemon, be- 
lieved to be written in the sixty-fourth year of the era, 
"Paul the aged," a he would hardly have been so known 
and designated, if he had been younger than that era. 
This would make him thirty-four or thirty-five, when he 
assisted in the execution of Stephen, and not younger 
than Jesus himself. Here, then, is a witness in the best 
position to give testimony concerning the career of Jesus, 
if Jerusalem was its theatre ; an enthusiastic, eloquent, 
but carefully educated scholar, who has learned some- 
thing of logic, and understands the force of an argument ; 

"Phil. 9. 



24O OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

who is as nearly impartial as he can be. in that he was a 
fierce partisan in succession of the Jewish and of the 
Christian faiths, while at the same time he was thoroughly 
imbued with such ideas, as might have been derived from 
Roman citizenship, travel, and the study of pagan poetry 
and philosophy. 

If Jesus came to Jerusalem for the first time a few days 
before his arrest, trial, and execution, as the narratives of 
Matthew, Mark, and Luke plainly imply, the brief excite- 
ment, which attended those events, might all have oc- 
curred while Paul was absent in his native province of 
Cilicia or upon some of the extensive journeys, by which 
he had familiarized himself with the civilized ancient 
world. The cosmopolitan spirit manifested in his writ- 
ings, and the comprehensive manner in which he set about 
propagating, over wide regions extending from Arabia to 
Spain, if not to Britain, the faith he had formerly perse- 
cuted, show that he had learned the world, not only from 
books, but from actual contact with its different races and 
religions. If Paul had been then living at Jerusalem, the 
same fanaticism, of which he makes confession, would 
have attracted him to the judgment hall of Pilate and 
have made his voice the loudest among those, who clam- 
ored that Barabbas, the robber, should be released and 
Jesus be crucified. If the apostle had on his conscience 
the guilt of having been one of the murderers of the man, 
for whom he came afterward to cherish such an exalted 
opinion as his master and savior, that sensitiveness, which 
made him recur so often to his persecution of the dis- 
ciples, could not have been suppressed in his correspond- 
ence. It is therefore to be believed, that Paul was not in 
Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion ; and it is prob- 
able — that being the only period when their two lives 
could have touched each other — that he never saw Jesus 
in his lifetime. 

The early Christian records are quite full of a con- 
troversy, which arose in the early Church over Paul's 
pretension to be an apostle. The evangelical party 
seemed to have insisted, that among disciples only twelve 
were raised to the rank of apostleship. Only these twelve 
were admitted to the confidences of the last supper." The 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 24I 

number must be kept full, but must not be enlarged. So 
when Judas- fell off into apostasy and suicide, the eleven 
survivors met to fill the vacancy with solemn prayer and 
deference to the intimations of the Holy Ghost. But they 
are not at liberty to choose at random. The apostles were 
the witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus, and the selec- 
tion must be made from among those, who were his com- 
panions from the time of the baptism of John till the 
ascension, — a requirement which would most effectually 
have made Paul ineligible. 11 Now then, when Paul with 
some warmth sets forth his claim to apostleship, based 
upon an oral commission from Jesus himself, if he had 
been able to substantiate it by adding, that he too was a 
witness at least of the death and resurrection of Jesus, 
which events happened at his home in Jerusalem, — though 
in his blindness and hatred he had refused to believe in 
the resurrection until an apparition of Jesus had appealed 
to his heart on the way to Damascus, — it would have 
given him a plausible qualification for the apostolical office. 
Still further, the stress he ever laid upon that ghostly 
interview, and his insisting that he did not care to know 
anything more about Jesus in the flesh, or as a living 
person, b while showing how he had been taunted with his 
ignorance of the person of Jesus, show also that, not hav- 
ing aught to meet the reproach, it had a basis of truth 
behind it. 

Throughout Paul's letters there is a remarkable absence 
of allusion to any communication received from Jesus 
in his lifetime, or to any personal recollection of his acts 
or words. When Paul anticipates the question : Upon 
tuhat authority do you speak of Jesus ? Who tells you what 
you report of him ? he invariably answers : The Spirit. 
God has revealed it to me by the Spirit. The Spirit 
searcheth the deep things of God. The things of God 
knoweth no man, only the Spirit of God. I speak not 
man's wisdom, but as the Holy Ghost teacheth. The 
gospel I preach I received not from men, but from the 
revelation of Jesus Christ, who called me by his grace to 
preach him among the heathen ; so I went not up to Jeru- 
salem to confer with the witnesses.' 1 

"Acts i., 15-26. MI. Cor. v., 16. c I. Cor. ii., 10, n, 13. 
<lGal. i., ix. 12, 17. 



24- OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

But Paul is absolutely silent on the subject of the mir- 
acles, which came to be attributed to Jesus.. If Jesus, 
living in Galilee, had done all his mighty works there, 
and, coming to Jerusalem only to be arrested, convicted, 
and put to death, had declined to show his miraculous 
powers there, otherwise than by his resurrection, as the 
Synoptic Gospels declare, Paul, whose absence from Jeru- 
salem during the events connected with the crucifixion 
may be reasonably conjectured, could not have had per- 
sonal knowledge of the miracles so occurring. But how 
can the fact be accounted for, that no rumor of these mar- 
vellous deeds came to his ears ? How can we believe 
that a distinct tradition of miracles had been received 
among the more reputable disciples, as early as the time 
of Paul's writing ? 

It may be said, however, although Paul's writings con- 
tain no hint that Jesus in his lifetime cured diseases, 
cast out devils, of which many were possessed, walked 
upon the sea, multiplied food, transfigured his form into 
something angelic and divine, and in several instances 
raised the dead, these writings everywhere attribute to 
Jesus higher and even divine powers, which imply the 
power to work miracles. It may be added in support of 
this view that Paul believed in miracles, and claimed that 
he himself had wrought them. He narrates in one of his 
letters that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard 
unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to 
utter. a In vindicating his claim to be an apostle, he says 
the signs of an apostle were wrought among his converts 
in signs and wonders and mighty deeds. b Miracle-working 
is on his theory indeed only one of the secondary gifts 
of the Spirit, given to the believers in consequence of the 
resurrection and return to heaven of the Head of the 
Church. He even goes so far as to give a scale of valu- 
ation of these gifts and powers in his first letter to the 
converts at Corinth, thus : " And God hath set some in 
the Church : first, apostles ; secondarily, prophets ; thirdly, 
teachers ; after that miracles ; then gifts of healings, 
helps in governments, diversities of tongues." * 

all. Cor. xii., i-4. b II. Cor. xii., 12. c I. Cor. xii., 28. 
• The writer is aware of the weighty argument which makes it nearly certain that when 
Paul, in these and several other passages, uses the word that has been unwarrantably trans- 
lated in our version miracles, he only refers to the charismata or gifts — rather spasmodic 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 243 

The argument is that the silence of the apostle in at- 
tributing miraculous agency to Jesus is not significant, 
since he could not honor so dignified and sublime a per- 
sonage as he believed Jesus to have been by imputing to 
him powers, which Paul felt ashamed to speak of, easily 
exercised by himself, and which among the new gifts of the 
Church he classed as inferior to apostleship, prophecy, and 
teaching. There is much force and pertinence in the 
statement, when thus put. Bat let it be considered that 
these gifts came to the world, as Paul everywhere declares, 
under what he characterized as a new order and regime of 
the Spirit, introduced after the vindication and glorifica- 
tion of Jesus as Son of God ; and also that Paul, whenever 
he speaks of the human life of Jesus, never places him 
— as the evangel of John does — in the category of an 
exalted and divine person signalizing his authority and 
dignity by mighty works and miracles, but as submissive 
to servile conditions and the shame and contempt which 
he voluntarily assumed as a part of his service and sac- 
rifice. In his letter to the converts at Philippi, he gives 
this view of Jesus in his pre-existence and in his human 
life : He being "in the form of God, thought it not robbery 
to be equal with God ; but made himself of no reputation, 
and took upon him the form of a servant, and became 
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." a This 
role of servant and contemned person, which he says Jesus 
assumed in being born as a man, is quite incompatible 
with the character of a great magician commanding the 
elements, ruling evil spirits, and suspending the processes 
of nature. It was when God raised Jesus from the dead 
by the working of his mighty power, that he set him at 
his right hand in the heavens, far above all principalities 
and power, and might and dominion, and every name in 
this world and the world to come, and made him the head 
of all things to the Church. 1 ' It was through his cruci- 
fixion and resurrection that his glory came, that he ceased 
to be the contemned servant, and became the head of the 
regenerated world. 

1 Phil, ii., 6-S. b Eph. i., 19-22. 

than supernatural — of which, though he possessed them himself in an eminent degree, he 
came to have a contemptuous estimate ; and that properly there is no claim by the apostle 
himself that hu had uvcr wrought a miracle It is deemed proper to offer considerations inval- 
idating the supernatural acts attributed to Jesus in his lifetime, that may fairly appeal to the 
candor even of those who believe in apostolic miracles. 



244 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

In his letter to the Roman Christians, Paul declares 
that Jesus, who by his human birth was of the family of 
David, was declared to be the Son of God with power, 
by the resurrection of the dead." And, in his second letter 
to the Corinthians, Paul writes that his master suffered 
crucifixion through weakness ; that is, the weakness inci- 
dent to the servile condition to which he had voluntarily 
submitted, but that he lived again by the power of God." 
Hence, Paul everywhere and in all his writings always 
asserts, that he preaches Christ the crucified, or rather 
Christ the risen from the dead ; insisting not only that 
the spiritual gifts, the rare powers, that came to the 
Church, were the gifts of the glorified Saviour, but that 
his own power, dignity, headship of the Church, and office 
of judge, were obtained through the suffering of the cross ; 
and that the abolition of death for them who believe was 
wrought out by the death of Jesus, and confirmed by his 
resurrection. Paul denies that he preaches Jesus the 
moralist, or Jesus the miracle-worker, but Christ the 
victim, submitting to crucifixion, raised above all princi- 
palities and powers by the power of God through his 
resurrection from the dead. It is easy to see that with 
such a conception miracle-working — any display of divine 
powers — breaks the harmony of the part, in which he ful- 
fils in weakness and patience the humiliation of a chosen 
lot of suffering and shame. 

Of course it is impossible to reconcile this silence of 
Paul with the account in the Fourth Gospel which gives 
us a Jesus spending three years in Jerusalem and its vicin- 
ity, and making excursions into Galilee ; holding long col- 
loquies in the temple with the Pharisees, — the multitude 
attending, and generally taking sides with Jesus; heal- 
ing an impotent man ; and giving sight to one born blind, 
in the most conspicuous way; and in the presence of the 
assembled populace, and, srangest of all, raising Lazarus 
from the dead before a company of respectable and influ- 
ential Jews. Even if we believe Paul, by a prolonged 
absence from the city, might have missed personal knowl- 
edge of these memorable events, he could not have 
returned without finding his adopted city full of the 
rumor and excitement which such works would naturally 

a Rom. i., 4. bn. Cor. xiii., 4. 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 245 

occasion. He does know, and know vividly, of the cruci- 
fixion, and comes enthusiastically to believe in the resur- 
rection. Of both these events, his authentic writings are 
full. He does not know of other resurrections, as re- 
markable as that of Jesus, preceding his, and caused by 
him, since his whole scheme of a resurrection gives 
Jesus the precedence, or, as he expresses it, makes him 
the first-fruits, makes resurrection impossible until Jesus 
has, by dying, visited the realms of death, and brought 
back with him from the king of death those whom he has 
kept in the prison of the grave. a He knows nothing of 
any miracle, or of any rank or condition of the human life 
of Jesus, with which miracle-working would be compat- 
ible ; and so, to such powers, he makes no allusion. 
When Paul wrote, the biographies of Jesus were not 
written ; what was believed concerning him was told, 
from mouth to mouth, among his disciples. Paul insists 
even, that the tradition of the last supper he received 
directly from Jesus himself. b Paul, in his writings, fre- 
quently betrays his unwillingness to acknowledge any 
indebtedness, even to the brothers and intimate compan- 
ions of Jesus, for knowledge of the incidents of his life 
and principles of his doctrine, lest he should thereby de- 
grade his apostleship by seeming to have had only a sec- 
ond-hand and hearsay knowledge of Christ. It can hardly 
be credited that Jesus in vision told him of the manner in 
which the communion of bread and wine had been inaugu- 
rated. It is, however, reasonably probable that there was 
at the time of Paul's writing no record in any form of 
Jesus' life and teaching, because every record, afterward 
appearing, had recounted this ceremony of the supper. 

The argument from Paul's silence concerning miracles 
is negative, but it is significant. Here is a first-rate wit- 
ness in the very presence of the most remarkable events 
that history has ever recorded, and he has no word to 
utter concerning them. Let us suppose that, ages hence, 
a question should arise whether Napoleon had been in 
fact a restless warrior, who had subverted governments, 
obliterated frontiers, and filled Europe with terror and 
bloodshed. Let us suppose, too, that of all the literature 
of our age only the writings of Goethe should have sur- 

" 1. Cor. xv., 20, 23 ; I. Thess. iv., 15-17. •> I. Cor. xi., 23. 



246 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

vived. How significant would be the silence of a writer, 
who had lived in the very countries chiefly disturbed by 
the ambitious projects of the French sovereign, or only 
such mention of him as implied that he was a pacific 
ruler, chiefly interested in reforming the laws and enlarg- 
ing the liberties of his subjects ! 

If the Epistles attributed respectively to Peter, James, 
and John, were written by those Galilean companions of 
Jesus, their omission of miracles is most remarkable. If 
those Epistles were written by later disciples, using apos- 
tolic names, then the first recognition of miracle-working 
by Jesus must be carried to a period later than the apos- 
tolic age. None of these writings speak of Jesus as a 
worker of wonders. Peter, if the second letter attributed 
to him be genuine, testifies to hearing the voice from 
heaven on the mount of transfiguration. But this scene 
was the manifestation of a power not attributed to Jesus, 
and of which he was the subject rather than the agent. 3 
On the whole, these writers mainly agree with Paul in 
representing Jesus' human life as a career of humiliation, 
and not one that was made splendid by marvellous 
powers, and in asserting that his glory and honor came 
to him after his resurrection. Peter, in the Epistle the 
authenticity of which is generally admitted, speaks of 
the glory of Christ as following his sufferings, of God 
raising him from the dead and giving him glory, of his 
being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the 
Spirit ; and asserts that, on his resurrection, he went into 
the heavens on the right hand of God, angels and powers 
being made subject to him. b 

A reference having been made to the extant writings 
of Paul, also to those of Peter, James, and John, compan- 
ions and witnesses of Jesus, to learn whether he wrought 
miracles, they give no' testimony on the subject. They 
present a scheme of the life and office of Jesus incom- 
patible with miracle-working. If the so-called Catholic 
Epistles were not written by the persons to whom they 
have been attributed, they are genuine literature of the 
early Christian epoch ; they indicate what the earliest 
writers considered the opinions of apostles. Who then 
among the believers first asserted that Jesus did miracles ? 

all. Pet. i., 15-18. b I. Pet. i., 11. 21; in., 18-22. 






LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 247 

What works so denoted did they attribute to him ? How- 
do their statements agree with each other ? 

The narratives of Matthew and Mark need not be 
treated as distinct testimonies. Scholars differ as to 
which was the earlier production. The most casual in- 
spection shows that Mark's narrative is Matthew's, with 
the discourses of Jesus left out or greatly abbreviated, or 
that Matthew's narrative is Mark's, with the Sermon on 
the Mount, the parables and conversations of Jesus super- 
added, together with legends of his birth and childhood. 
Whether Mark's story was first committed to writing, and 
Matthew's afterward, to supply its deficiencies from a 
more accurate memory, whether this order was reversed, 
and Mark's Gospel was written to abbreviate the other 
record, retaining only what was more surely and uni- 
versally believed, or whether, as some assert, both his- 
tories are reproductions of an earlier document that has 
perished, are questions of secondary consequence. It is 
enough to note that a similarity of diction and a gener- 
ally similar order of events in the first two Gospels indi- 
cate that both have adopted one version of the memora- 
bilia of Jesus, widely credited among his followers at the 
time of its publication, whenever that may have been. 

In this connection, it ought to be observed that the 
traditions of the propagandism of Paul and the chief 
apostles, as preserved in the Acts of the Apostles and 
the canonical Epistles, contain no allusions to any written 
memorials of the life of Jesus. It is fairly inferrible 
that the writing, or, at any rate, the publication of the 
Gospels, must have been later than the time when any of 
the canonical Epistles were written. In all modern mis- 
sionary enterprises to propagate the gospel, even among 
degraded and illiterate people, like the South Africans 
and South Sea Islanders, the literary department is most 
sedulously attended to. Years of painful study are first 
devoted to learning the language of the barbarians, whom it 
is proposed to convert. If they have no written language, 
one is invented for them. The machinery of propagan- 
dism is wrought with infinite industry, and against the 
friction of an enormous expense, and by processes so 
slow and painful, that only a sustained and systematized 
enthusiasm could prosecute the task, to establish through 



248 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

culture an intellectual relation with the people to be 
Christianized. The best genius of the most ardent and 
scholarly men have found no shorter road than this to the 
heart of the heathen. All through the long labor of over- 
throwing a rude cultus and supplanting it with a higher 
one, the Bible, translated into the speech of the pagan 
people, the tract, the written and printed page, are relied 
upon as the great agency of their conversion. 

Now, there is every reason why the first disciples 
should have taken the same mode of effort. Their task 
was to carry the gospel of the kingdom of heaven not to 
illiterate and heathen people, but to the enlightened 
Greeks, who, in that period, were at the zenith of their 
culture, and who had schools and libraries in Egypt, Syria, 
Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy. The gospel narratives 
were written in Greek, then the language of the civilized 
world. If the apostles possessed them, they would have 
used them to confirm their testimony of Jesus. They 
would have used them as the missionary and revivalist 
use them now, as effective instruments to arouse and 
impress the conscience of their auditors, to edify the 
believers under their persecutions, and as the ritual of 
their devotional services. We have their hortatory letters 
to the churches ; we have in the Acts fragments of their 
occasional discourses ; and in neither is there any men- 
tion of the Gospels, though in both, the old scriptures are 
used as frequently, as copiously, and for the same rhetori- 
cal purposes as in modern preaching. We even find Paul, 
the philosopher and scholar, when he writes to Christian 
communities, in such regions as Rome, Galatia, and Cor- 
inth, drawing all his doctrines and arguments from the 
Bible of a religion which he believed Christianity had 
supplanted, and keeping the minds of his heathen con- 
verts occupied with the narrow discipline, in which Jeho- 
vah had trained the Jews. It thus appears, that, if the 
canonical Gospels or any of them were written in the 
lifetime of Paul, he studiously withheld from them the 
sanction of his name. 

All this tends to discredit in advance the testimony of 
the evangelists upon the matter of the miracles. We find 
the great and responsible men in the Christian movement 
silent, if not hostile, toward the claim; and we have to 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 249 

deal with unknown writers, whom neither Jesus nor his 
apostles are known to have commissioned. Long after 
the events they record, on their own account, and under 
none of the responsibility that accompanies publication 
under a reputable name, these writers undertake to give 
a statement, not of actual occurrences, but of what "is 
surely believed''' among the adherents of a new faith. 
Luke, in the introductory note to his Gospel, confesses 
such motive and method of writing. The authority of 
a history of the events of our own century would be 
properly estimated upon a scale like this. First, an his- 
torian of t world-wide celebrity, like Macaulay, Niebuhr, or 
Prescott, wrote and published it thirty years ago ; it has 
been republished, after being subjected to the criticism of 
scholars for the intervening period. This would be called 
historical evidence of prime character. Second, it was 
written anonymously, as long ago, but published in a most 
respectable and trustworthy review, is probable in itself, 
and has never been contradicted. This would be called 
secondary historical evidence. Third, it was written 
anonymously, as a private letter ; it is full of statements 
intrinsically improbable ; and its authorship has never 
been ascertained. What would be the worth of the last- 
named testimony ? 

The story of the miracle-working begins with the 
account of the opening of the public ministry of Jesus, 
and Matthew tells that he went about all Galilee, healing 
all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease among 
the people ; and that they brought unto him all sick 
people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, 
and those which were possessed with devils, and those 
who were lunatic, and those that had . the palsy, and 
he healed them.' 1 Taken narrowly and literally, this 
implies a healing of all the disorders and diseases of the 
province of Galilee, then densely peopled. But the nar- 
rative, written in an animated style, and with Oriental 
exaggeration characteristic of the age and country, is not 
to be so treated. It does, however, fairly imply that 
Jesus visited all parts of Galilee, — not to say every house 
or even every hamlet, — that, to all the principal centres 
of its population, he came, not only as a preacher of 



250 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

the kingdom of heaven, but as a healer of the sick, 
that there were brought to him, if not literally, all sick 
and disabled persons, yet some of all kinds of such ; and 
that as many as were brought he healed. Less than 
this cannot be fairly implied, if indeed the reader is 
at liberty to find any definite statement in the language. 

Later on, the same writer gives us the picture of 
one day's life of Jesus in Galilee, in which by a word he 
cleansed a leprous man, cast out an evil spirit from the 
servant of a Roman centurion, cured Peter's wife's mother 
of a fever by a touch of his hand, and restored to sanity 
and healed many persons brought to him in the, evening. 
Afterward, he stilled a dangerous tempest on the sea of 
Galilee, and, landing upon the pagan side, relieved two 
men tormented with fierce devils, that had made them 
a terror to the neighborhoods The sequel of the last- 
named miracle shows how national prejudices may some- 
times intrude themselves into the most serious narrative. 
We readily detect a popular origin — the opportunity of 
some local humorist to make mirth for his countrymen, 
at the unclean practices of the barbarians of the other 
side — in the consignment of the expelled demons to the 
herd of swine. 

Returning among his own countrymen, Jesus by a 
command made a palsied and bed-ridden man rise and 
walk, cured with a touch of his garment a woman of a 
disease of twelve years' standing, and, taking by the hand 
a certain ruler's daughter, who was supposed to have just 
died, brought her to life. Afterward, — the writer gives 
no chronology, and very rarely a locality, — he is evidently 
recounting traditions, of which no detail is preserved, — 
Jesus causes two blind men to see, and a dumb man 
to speak, or, as the writer describes it, the man being pos- 
sessed with the devil of dumbness, Jesus casts out the 
devil, when the man, no longer obstructed, speaks like 
other men. Then there follows a still more sweeping 
assertion of miracles, done in the mass, in these words : 
" Jesus went through all the cities and villages, healing 
every sickness and every disease among the people." b 
Still, it is not asserted that he healed every sick and 
diseased man in all the cities and villages ; but it is fairly 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 25 1 

implied that, going into all the cities and villages, he 
healed every kind of sickness : there was no prevalent 
sickness, of which he did not effect a cure. 

After some time, — we are not told how long, — Jesus 
went into their synagogue on the Sabbath, — we are not 
told in what country or city, — and after some hesitation 
on account of the Pharisees, who were watching him, 
he restored to vigor the withered arm of a palsied man. 
Alarmed at the hostility, which thereupon beset him, he 
withdrew, — we are not told whither, — and healed all the 
sick among the multitudes, that followed him. a It is then 
related, that he cast out a devil, which had afflicted a 
man with blindness and dumbness, so that he both spake 
and saw. 1 ' 

When certain scribes and Pharisees asked him to do a 
miracle, he told them that the only miracle he should 
show them was the miracle of rising from the grave after 
being buried three days and three nights. But notwith- 
standing this refusal, it is again told that, pitying the 
multitudes who followed him to a desert place, he healed 
the sick among them, and with but five loaves and two 
fishes fed to repletion five thousand men with their 
accompanying women and children/ His disciples re- 
turned across the lake from this desert place, leaving 
Jesus alone on a mountain ; and, in the middle of the 
night, he, walking on the sea, came to them as they were 
struggling with a storm, and at once it fell calm. 6 Then 
he went into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, and there 
exorcised a devil possessing the daughter of a Canaanitish 
woman, and healed those that were lame, blind, dumb, 
maimed, and many others brought to.him by great multi- 
tudes of people. There, too, he repeated for the benefit 
of a crowd of four thousand — women and children not 
counted — the miraculous multiplication of food. £ Again, 
he refuses to exhibit his powers to scribes and Pharisees, 
denounces them as a wicked and adulterous generation, 
and says, no sign shall be given them but the sign of the 
prophet Jonah, whose burial in the whale for a season, to 
be returned alive, he will not long thereafter re-enact. B 
The sequel tells of his transfiguration on the mountain 

; 'Matt xii., ^15. b Matt, xii., aa. c Matt, xii., 38-40. <l Matt, xiv., 14-21. 
"Matt, xiv., 23-32. f Matt, xv., 21-39. gMatt. xvi., 4. 



252 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

and the apparition of the two greatest of the Hebrew- 
prophets doing him homage;" and again of his casting out 
a devil that had baffled the skill of the disciples, who 
seem strangely to have lost the powers conferred on 
them, when sent out to preach the kingdom of heaven/' 
As the career of Jesus goes on, he seems to lose control 
of the unseen powers. His works of healing and dispos- 
session seem to grow less frequent ; and his teachings, 
parables, exhortations, prognostications of the future, and 
expositions of the polity of the kingdom of heaven fill a 
larger place in his life. 

Still upon the multitudes, who follow him out of Galilee 
as far as the region opposite Judea beyond the Jordan, he 
exercises his powers of healing, and gives sight to two 
blind men, who sat by the road as he came out of Jericho, 
followed by his Galilean disciples bound to Jerusalem. 11 

Once arrived in the city, all miracle-working ceases. 
The scribes and Pharisees are the rulers of Church and 
State ; and before them, even in Galilee, he had resolutely, 
and with contumelious language, refused to show a sign 
from heaven. The only sign he will do among them is 
the Jonas-sign of the resurrection. True, Matthew says, 
the blind and lame came to him in the temple, and he 
healed them. But Mark and Luke do not confirm the 
statement. Such exhibitions of power by Jesus would 
have been inconsistent with his avowed purpose not to 
show any sign, and with his determination to bring about 
his own arrest, condemnation, and death, which could only 
be effected by abstaining from any exhibitions of power, 
that might convince or overawe his enemies. 

This is the combined testimony of Matthew and Mark 
concerning the thaumaturgic powers of Jesus. It is to 
be remarked, that the power is not universal or uni- 
form. Jesus is made himself to say that he did not exer- 
cise it arbitrarily, but in such places and upon such 
subjects as God pleased. There was, he declared, the 
same restriction of the wonderful power manifested of old 
by the prophets Elijah and Elisha. He gave this as 
a reason why he could not do in Nazareth 1 the mighty 
works reported done in Capernaum. The narrator in 

a Matt, xvii., i-S. bMatt. xvii., 14-21. cMatt. xix., i, 2. 

<1 Matt, xx., 29-34. >■ Matt, xxi., 14. f Luke i v., 23-27. 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 253 

each of the first two Gospels asserts that miracle-working 
in Nazareth was obstructed by lack of faith on the part of 
his fellow-townsmen. a But, on the other hand, for what 
end, we are constrained to ask, were these marvellous 
powers given ? Clearly, the writer answers that the 
people to whom Jesus was sent should believe that he 
was the commissioned messenger of God. And Jesus 
himself is made to avow this object, when, in the hearing 
of the messengers from John, he appealed to the cures 
he had effected, to the diseased persons restored to health 
and wholeness, and said : As to who I am, let works like 
these declare. 1 ' Again, in reproaching Capernaum, Cho- 
razin, and Bethsaida, wherein most of his mighty works 
had been done, for not believing, he is made to admit that 
such mighty works were done to produce belief. 

This difficulty then confronts us. Here is a person- 
age appearing in an obscure corner of an outlying prov- 
ince of a subject and despised country, who, having 
passed his youth in utter seclusion, conceives that he is 
a prophet, a divine messenger, the heir of an everlasting 
kingdom, the early establishment of which is to overthrow 
all earthly kingdoms, and bring the physical universe 
itself to an end; and he begins in his early manhood to 
proclaim a new era, and to ask of men their allegiance, 
the reward of which shall be their everlasting salvation, 
the refusal of which shall be their speedy and miserable 
destruction. He claims that he is accredited by super- 
natural gifts of healing, and the power of suspending, by 
his will and word, the ordinary courses of nature. Now, 
to make men believe, it is clearly requisite, according to 
conceptions imputed to him in these narratives, that he 
should exhibit these powers. And yet the reverse condi- 
tion is exacted. He is made to say that he will not ex- 
hibit these powers, unless men will first believe that he 
can.' 1 His biographer declares even, that he could not do 
miracles in Nazareth because of the unbelief of his neigh- 
bors. Clearly, this was the very people upon whom the 
miracle-working should have been essayed, in order that 
they might believe. A supernatural effort is superfluous, 
where faith, the great purpose of supernatural demonstra- 
tion, has already been produced. 

"Matt, xiii., 58. '> Matt, xi., 4, 5. c Matt, xi., 20-23. 
<1 Matt, via., 10, 13; ix., 28,29; xvii., 20. 



254 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Again, the message of Jesus was first to the Jewish 
people, to the scribes and Pharisees, who, as he admitted, 
sitting in Moses' seat, represented the will and thought of 
the nation/ 1 I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of 
Israel, he said. If Chorazin ought to have believed, 
because mighty works were done in it, the converse is 
true ; and mighty works, if they tend to produce belief, as 
he told John's followers, ought to have been done in 
every city where he desired men to believe. Only char- 
latans and impostors ask for faith beforehand. The dis- 
coverer of some occult law of nature, some striking result 
of chemical experiment, says rather : I do not ask you to 
believe this in advance. I ask you to disbelieve it, since 
it is in itself ostensibly impossible and incredible ; but I 
shall do it in the most open way before you, and I leave 
it to you to say, whether or not you can accept it as a fact 
and conform your preconceptions to it. Why, then, of all 
classes, did he refuse to show a sign from heaven to the 
scribes and Pharisees ? Are not the Jews first, through 
their authorized guides and masters, to be proffered the 
grace of the great salvation ? If they are unbelievers, 
why should not their unbelief be assailed by the divine 
power, given for that purpose ? Why, like John the Bap- 
tist, proscribe them in advance, coming to the baptism of 
repentance, and refuse to exhibit before them what is 
so lavishly displayed before the multitudes, who throng 
around the heavenly messenger in the desert, and not 
withheld even from the dogs of heathen that feed on the 
crumbs which the guests of Israel drop from the table ? 

This insisting upon faith in Jesus as Messiah and 
Saviour, everywhere injected into these gospel narratives, 
carries us forward beyond the age of Jesus and his apos- 
tles to the period of propagandism of the new religion, 
to the long and ardent struggle which the enthusiasm 
of a young faith maintained with the philosophy, culture, 
conservatism, sordidness, and sensuality of the old world. 
In this struggle, faith was everything. Give in your ad- 
hesion to the new ideas, own Jesus as master, these 
were the frantic appeals of the devotees to the frivolity 
and indifference that abounded. " Every spirit," wrote 
the pseudo-John, " that confesseth that Jesus Christ is 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 255 

come in the flesh is of God " ; and again he asks, — the 
coarseness of his language betraying the dogmatic fierce- 
ness of his spirit, — " Who is a liar, but he that denieth 
that Jesus is the Christ ? " Whoever believeth that Jesus 
is the Christ is born of God. a Paul, too, wrote : No man 
can say tJtat Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost ; and 
Paul seems to have composed two of his Epistles to prove 
that faith is a substitute for virtue, and that all virtue is 
the fruit of faith. So great, in the struggle to inaugurate 
a new creed, were the eagerness and enthusiasm of its 
apostles. 

How does Luke, the other witness, tell the story of 
the miracle-working ? Luke says : Jesus returned in the 
power of the Spirit into Galilee from the wilderness of 
Jordan, and teaching in the synagogues was glorified of 
all men, and a fame of him went through all the region. b 
This indicates a fame and honor springing rather from 
his preaching than from miracles. The utter chronologi- 
cal confusion, in which the incidents of Jesus' career are 
told by Luke, is indicated by the statement that, coming 
to his own city Nazareth, he is importuned by his neigh- 
bors to do in their midst the works they had heard of 
as done in Capernaum, no such works having as yet 
been recounted, as done anywhere in Galilee. Return- 
ing afterward to Capernaum, he casts out an unclean 
devil from one possessed ; and the people are amazed, 
as they would not have been, if many such works had 
been before done among them, so that the rumor of them 
had spread to Nazareth. 11 He also cured Peter's wife's 
mother ill of fever. u In the evening, all the families that 
had sick brought them to him, and he healed them by a 
touch. f Devils also came out of many invoking him as 
the Son of God.' Afterwards, going into Peter's ship, he 
directed where the net should be cast, and so many fish 
were taken that they filled not only that, but a companion 
ship nearly to sinking. This marvel so impressed Peter 
and probably his brother Andrew, and the two sons of 
Zebedee, James, and John that they left their calling to 
become his disciples.' 1 In a certain city, he cleansed a 

* I. John iv. ( 2 ; ii., 22 ; v., 1. b Luke iv., 14, 15. c Luke iv., 23. 

<* Luke iv., 31, 33. c Luke i v., 38, 39. fLukeiv.,40. 

V, Luke iv., 41. Ii Luke v., 3-9, 10, 11. 



256 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

leprous sufferer ; and then multitudes were brought to him 
to be cured of their infirmities. On a certain other day, 
he restored vigor to a palsied man brought to him on a 
bed, and let down through the tiling of the roof." After- 
ward, on the Sabbath, he healed a man with a withered 
hand; 1 ' and, coming down from a mountain, whither he 
had gone to pray, a great multitude of people out of all 
Judea and Jerusalem, and from the sea-coast of Tyre and 
Sidon, came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases, 
and they, as well as all vexed with unclean spirits, were 
healed. Virtue went out from him, and healed them all. 
It was then — it is not told where — that he addressed, not 
to the multitude, but to his disciples, that part of the 
Sermon on the Mount that Luke has recorded. 

Coming again to Capernaum, he cures the servant of a 
Roman centurion by a word, without visiting him ; d and 
the day after stops a burial procession, and restores alive 
to his mother in the city of Nain her only son, who was 
being borne to burial. The rumor of this great work 
went through all Judea and the region round about. 6 It 
is then told that, in crossing the lake in a ship, on which 
were the disciples and Jesus, who had fallen asleep, a 
great storm of wind arose ; the ship took in water and 
was near foundering, when Jesus awoke, rebuked the 
winds and a calm ensued. f Arrived at the country of the 
Gadarenes, he commands the horde of devils to go into 
the herd of swine, and they rushed to the lake and were 
drowned. 8 He afterward returned to the Galilean side, 
and called to life the young daughter of the ruler Jairus, who 
was supposed to have died ; and healed a diseased woman 
by the touch of his garment.' 1 Luke next tells of the 
feeding of five thousand people upon five loaves and 
two fishes, of the story of the transfiguration, and of 
the casting out of a fierce devil from a child. 1 Then fol- 
lows the casting out of a dumb devil in the presence of 
the Pharisees, and their imputation to him of a league 
with the chief of devils, with his crushing reply. j It is 
afterwards told that the multitude pressed him to show a 
sign, and that he told them they were an evil generation, 

a Luke v., 12-15, 18-26. 1> Luke vi., 6-10. c Luke vi., 17-19. d Luke vii., 1-10. 

c Luke vii., 11-18. f Luke viii., 22-25. S Luke viii., 26-33. 1> Luke viii., 40-56. 

i Luke ix., 10-17, 28-36, 38-42. J Luke xi.,.14,26. 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 257 

to whom no sign should be given, but the sign of the 
prophet Jonas, raised to life from the belly of the whale, 
as he himself would be from the bowels of the earth. a 
After many chapters of teaching and parable, another 
work of healing is ascribed to Jesus upon a woman bowed 
together with a spirit of infirmity, so that she could in 
no wise lift up herself. b More and more the marvellous 
powers disappear, and the incidents that befall the great 
Prophet fall into the sphere of probability. Still a drop- 
sical patient is healed upon the Sabbath ; c on the way to 
Jerusalem, in a certain city, it may have been in Galilee, 
it may have been in Samaria, ten lepers are cleansed, but 
one of whom had the grace to return to give thanks ; d 
and a blind man, who begged by the wayside, as he 
approached Jericho, is restored to sight. But with this 
last effort the superhuman power is apparently suspended, 
and, resuming the weakness of human nature, he yields 
himself to the malice of his enemies. 

How is this testimony of miracles to be treated ? If it 
is the testimony of God, or of men inspired, informed, or 
directed by Him, it is to be reverently believed. But it 
must be so far subjected to rational criticism, as to deter- 
mine whether it is to be so regarded. Both narrators 
agree in these general statements, that all the mighty 
works or miracles which they impute to Jesus, with the 
exception of restoring sight to a beggar, or two beggars 
in the environs of Jericho, were done by him in Galilee, 
and in the countries adjoining that province, eastward 
across the Jordan and Sea of Galilee, westward in the 
coasts of Tyre and Sidon, and southward in the province 
of Samaria. They both leave us to believe that the 
miracle-working power either left Jesus or was restrained 
by him, after he left his home in Galilee, and betook him- 
self to Jerusalem, where, after his arrival, his arrest, trial, 
and execution speedily followed each other. Both assert 
that, while still in Galilee, he declined showing his mirac- 
ulous power in the presence of scribes and Pharisees, and 
again declined, after he had come to Jerusalem, in each 
instance alleging that all the sign he would show to 
them was the sign of his resurrection after being buried 

a Luke xi., 2<j, 30. t> I.ukt: xiii., 10—13. ° Luke xiv., 2-4. 

'I Luke xvii., 11-19. eLuke xviii., 35-43. 



258 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

three days and three nights. Both insist that prelimi- 
nary faith was a favorable condition of successful miracle- 
working : and that confirmed disbelief in his power would 
in many cases even totally counteract, at least, his moral 
power to accomplish a miracle. 

Moreover the two narrators agree in the affirmation that 
in his native province of Galilee, Jesus visited all the prin- 
cipal centres of population, and — to take their language 
literally — every city and village, and healed and relieved, 
if not all sick, lame, maimed, and mentally deranged per- 
sons, all that were brought to him in all the cities and 
villages. As both writers assert that great multitudes 
followed him, and that the fame of him filled all the prov- 
ince and all Syria, they leave it to be inferred that all or 
nearly all the persons suffering infirmities in Galilee, 
were first or last brought to him, and were relieved ; 
since all who believed in his power, and many who did 
not, would not hesitate to avail themselves of it, when it 
was so easy of access, and so uniformly efficacious. 

When it comes to details there are discrepancies. Part 
of these may be accounted for by the consideration that 
each, besides special cases, gives a general, comprehen- 
sive statement of cures and restorations, of which no de- 
tails are given, while in selecting some to be more fully 
described, Matthew chooses certain instances, and Luke 
selects different ones. Thus Matthew tells of one leper 
being cleansed, of whom Luke makes no mention, but 
makes amends by telling of ten lepers cleansed, which 
Matthew fails to report. Luke affirms that four chief 
disciples were won by a marvellous draft of fishes, which 
would seem to have given the successful fishers a new 
zest for their calling ; while Matthew says, Jesus found 
the eager disciples sitting listless on the shore mending 
their nets, and that they gladly left a precarious business 
to become fishers of men. Both tell of the healing of the 
centurion's servant, with such agreeing details, that it is 
an evident purpose to describe the same transaction ; but 
Matthew says the centurion came himself with deferential 
courtesy to solicit Jesus' aid, while Luke insists that, in 
the first instance, the centurion sent elders of the Jews to 
procure the attendance of Jesus, and, growing impatient, 
sent friends to say it was not worth his trouble to visit 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 259 

the patient, but that he might speak a word that would 
heal the servant, giving as a reason for such suggestion 
what is meaningless as told by Matthew, " I, too, am a 
man of authority, and when I speak to my soldiers, 
they do what I bid." Luke is silent concerning the mi- 
raculous cures attributed to Jesus in the vicinity of Tyre 
and Sidon, but there was a national feeling, and a theory 
of the blessings of the gospel being offered only to Jews 
at the first, which might account for the omission. 

But there are variances not so easily explained as 
these. Thus Matthew says in the country of the Gada- 
renes, Jesus was met by two men possessed with devils 
exceeding fierce, while Luke, evidently occupied with the 
same tradition, says there was but one man so possessed. 
Luke tells of the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes 
feeding the five thousand people, but Matthew tells that 
incident, and says that it was repeated as to four thousand 
people not long afterward. Matthew says Jesus, having 
absented himself for several hours from his disciples, 
came to them at night, walking upon the sea, while Luke, 
who gives with great detail the stilling of the storm, does 
not mention this marvel. Both writers undertake to re- 
count the last of the miracles, but Matthew says that it 
was restoring sight to two blind beggars, after Jesus and 
his company had left Jericho journeying to Jerusalem; 
Luke says it was the cure of one blind beggar sitting by 
the wayside before he entered Jericho. Finally, Mat- 
thew, who tells — as both tell — with detail of place and 
time the healing of the centurion's servant in Capernaum, 
wholly ignores the stupendous work wrought by Jesus 
the very next day in the neighboring city of Nain, in rais- 
ing from his bier alive a young man, son of a widow, 
whose corpse was being carried to burial, — a miracle which 
Luke says brought fear upon all the people, who declared 
that "a great prophet had arisen among them, and that 
God had visited his people." When an event happens, it 
draws with it its natural and usual concomitant circum- 
stances. Accordingly, Luke goes on to say that the 
rumor of this remarkable achievement went through all 
Judea, and throughout all the region round about. It 
could not have well been otherwise. In no age, among 
no people, in no quarter of the world, could a dead man be 



200 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

raised from his bier and presented alive to his rejoicing 
friends without creating a profound admiration for the 
deed, and an awful reverence for its author. The biogra- 
pher says also, that it was this crowning exhibition of su- 
perhuman power by Jesus which arrested the attention 
of John the Baptist, and suggested to him that the 
Messiah, whom he believed to be near his coming, must 
be this worker of wonders. Why does Matthew omit all 
mention of a miracle in which the fame of Jesus culmi- 
nated, which caused his countrymen to accept him as a 
great prophet, and gained John's weighty adhesion to 
him, as to him that was to come ; which led to his own 
reluctant assumption of the Messiahship, and so precip- 
itated the crisis of his fate ? The omission of such an 
incident in the career of Jesus by a writer evidently un- 
dertaking to tell the whole story, and bringing us indeed 
to the very occasion and day, when this thing is said to 
have occurred, throws the greatest doubt upon its 
actuality. 

Dr. Paley says : — 

I know not a more rash or unphilosophical conduct of the under- 
standing than to reject the substance of a story by means of some 
diversity in the circumstances with which it is related. The usual 
character of human testimony is substantial truth tinder circum- 
stantial variety. This is what the daily experience of courts of 
justice teaches. When accounts of a transaction come from the 
mouths of different witnesses, it is seldom that it is not possible to 
pick out apparent or real inconsistencies between them. 

Conceding to its full extent the principle enunciated 
by Paley, and by him appealed to, to support the credibil- 
ity of the New Testament writers, it is obvious that it is 
a rule that he applies only to human testimony. The 
variance in circumstances accompanying a fact, which 
different witnesses report substantially alike, is usually 
due to the natural defects of the human understanding. 
The rule cannot be pleaded to excuse the variance in two 
different divine oracles. To the divine mind, however 
manifested, we attribute entire integrity, complete knowl- 
edge. We always speak of the infinite intelligence as 
something not subject to the limitations and errors of the 
finite intelligence. So that very rule, which Dr. Paley 
lays down, concedes all that the sceptical critic can ask, 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 26 1 

in conceding that Matthew and Luke are to be treated 
like ordinary men giving their testimony upon knowledge 
acquired by the defective and imperfect faculties of mere, 
unaided human understanding. When it is asked upon 
what authority are we to believe that Jesus of Nazareth 
wrought miracles, we are only told that two persons of 
common intelligence, unknown to us, have so declared in 
writings to which they have put their respective names. 

Conceding now, that whether two men among the Gad- 
arenes were dispossessed of devils, or only one ; whether 
two blind beggars in the vicinity of Jericho were restored 
to sight, or only one, are mere circumstances, which dif- 
ferent truthful witnesses might observe, remember, and 
report differently, the divine mind, the spirit of truth, an 
inspiration of God, could not and would not report such 
circumstances incorrectly. But here is not a variance in 
circumstances, but a variance in the substantial fact, that 
we have to deal with. If one witness should declare in 
court that Judas Iscariot in the vicinity of Jericho killed 
and robbed a travelling Samaritan, and another witness, 
being afterwards sworn, should testify that the accused 
killed and robbed at the same time and place two Samari- 
tans, it would be held, that there was such a variance in 
the substance of the corpus delicti, that it could not be 
considered as proved by such evidence. One of the 
modes of protecting innocent persons against the malice 
of false accusations is to seclude the witnesses, and draw 
each in turn into a detail of circumstances, which it is 
hardly possible for two different imaginations to fabri- 
cate alike, and the rule applied in courts of justice is, that 
where several witnesses bear testimony to the same 
transaction, and concur in their statement of a series 
of circumstances, and the order in which they occur, such 
coincidences exclude all apprehension of mere chance or 
accident, and can be accounted for only by one of two 
suppositions : either the testimony is true, or the coinci- 
dences are the result of concert and conspiracy. We 
are but following the line of argument by which the 
credibility of events connected with the life of Jesus is 
supported by the most distinguished champion of the 
Christian faith, when we decide that the evidence of the 
delists is to be treated exactly like human evidence. 



262 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

The view already taken of the Fourth Gospel prevents 
its being considered a third and independent testimony to 
the miracles. If that work is, for the reasons heretofore 
set forth, to be regarded as a legitimate literary fiction, 
the purpose of which was not to give a history of the acts 
and conversations of Jesus, but to develop in a vivid dra- 
matic form the conceptions of his ideas and office to 
which the more advanced and philosophical believers had 
arrived in the age when it was written, then the writer 
was not obliged by the rules of his art to confine himself 
to the authentic facts of the life of Jesus. He could use 
those facts, when he found them subservient to his didac- 
tic purpose. He could imagine kindred and other facts 
that would best harmonize with the symmetry of his sub- 
ject, and make the life of Jesus realize the ideal concep- 
tion he wished to present. Thus Shakspeare, in dealing 
with Henry the Fourth, or Richard the Third, avails him- 
self of the known prominent events, like the great battles, 
the great trials and executions, and follows history 
mainly in his dramatis personis ; but he puts a purpose 
and a meaning into plots and projects, far more heroic 
and poetic than the dull facts. He brings the sharp re- 
trospect of a more critical later age to vivify and inform 
the conduct of the past, and injects into the minds of 
kings and courtiers the consciousness, which they did not 
have, of the relation of their struggles and intrigues with 
the development of English character and of English civ- 
ilization. So the Johannic dramatist does not intend to 
make any new demands upon the credulity of the Church. 
It is already believed that Jesus rose himself from the 
dead, and that, in one or two instances, he had restored 
the dead to life. The author wishing to present the doc- 
trine of the resurrection, as it had come to be held in 
philosophic schools of the new faith, does it dramati- 
cally, rather than metaphysically. There was a Mary and 
Martha whom Jesus knew, whose names tradition had 
preserved. They had lived at Bethany. Jesus had 
lodged with them, when in daily peril of his enemies in 
Jerusalem, during those last days of his life. The dram- 
atist will have a brother in this family. He graphically 
depicts their domestic life, homely, pleasant, but thor- 
oughly respectable. He brings Jesus to them with their 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 263 

other most eminent and reputable friends. It is the 
pathos of fiction that death can be made to visit the 
creations of our fancy. Wishing to unfold the mysteries 
of the resurrection, he lets Jesus do it with touching elo- 
quence over the grave whence Lazarus is summoned to 
return to his dim and unreal life. 

Jesus did no miracles in the temple or even in Jerusa- 
lem, but he had elsewhere, and frequently restored sight 
to the blind. Keeping up the great controversial debate, 
of which all the apostolic writings are full, between the 
hard and uncompromising Mosaic monotheism, and the 
new claim that God had a son, that there are two, if not 
three deities, and trying to find in the old theology some 
implication or foreshadowing of the new, the writer enli- 
vens the argument with marvels kindred to those already 
believed. He has a blind man cured in the temple, and 
makes it the occasion of a serious appeal to the Jews to 
recognize in him, to whom God appoints such works, one 
sent and commissioned by Jehovah. As the dramatic 
English kings of Shakspeare have crowded out the his- 
toric, and stand forever in the grand attitudes in which 
his genius placed them, so the dramatic Jesus of John has 
eclipsed the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, and is en- 
shrined in the reverence and affection of Christian hearts. 

Those, however, who accept John's story as history 
have to reconcile, as they can, the entirely different 
version of miracle-working which he gives. Not only is 
no confirmation given by him of the general healing of all 
sickness, and all disease among the people of every city 
and village of Galilee, of the curing of all the diseased 
among the multitudes that thronged around him from 
that province, from Judea, and the region beyond Jordan, 
of the great fame of such great works, that filled all 
Syria, so that the people at least of Galilee believed him 
to be a great prophet, but John asserts that Jesus did 
but two miracles in all in Galilee. 11 John names in fact 
two others; 1 ' but he asserts that the principal and great 
miracles were done in Judea and Jerusalem. He dis- 
closes that, comparatively late in the public career of 
Jesus as a prophet, his own brothers did not believe on 
him,' and that the people of Nazareth were only induced 

n John ii., 1 1 ; iv., 54. b John vi., 5-14, 17-21. John vii. , 5 ; Markui.,21. 



264 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

to accept him, after the report of the miracles had come to 
them from people who came from Jerusalem and Judea. 1 

In a work of purposed and avowed fiction, such depart- 
ure from the historic tradition is of no significance. The 
only historic weight to be given to the Johannic narrative 
is that, at the time when the believers came generally 
to accept its statements as authentic, whether that was 
during the second century or still later, there was a tradi- 
tion of the miracles entirely inconsistent with the earlier 
tradition. If the so-called John declared that but four 
comparatively insignificant miracles were done in any 
other province than Judea, and no others ; and Matthew 
and Luke, or writers so called, with equal positiveness 
assert that no miracles were done in Judea, and that 
Jesus refused, on being solicited, even to attempt them, 
the testimony can only be reconciled by believing that 
both were either mistaken in saying that miracles were 
performed anywhere, or mistaken in denying that they 
were not performed in both regions where Jesus is known 
to have lived or visited. In such contradiction, it is obvi- 
ous that we are obliged to take that alternative which is 
most probable and most consonant with human experience. 

Considering the testimony of the evangelists as mere 
human testimony, we find both writers evidently groping 
among popular beliefs vague and uncertain and burdened 
with few details of time and place. It was, they say, in a 
certain city, at a time after some other time, itself not 
given, and their sequences of events by no means corre- 
spond to each other. The believers had been taught and 
they believed that Jesus had raised himself from the dead, 
and ascended to heaven. They fully accepted him as a 
superhuman person. One by one, the marvellous feats of 
curing, of walking on the sea, of creating food, of raising 
the dead began to be told and believed by obscure parti- 
sans of the new faith, who already had all the elements of 
faith in miracles, to wit : first, a belief that they had been 
wrought for and by the great patriarchs and prophets of 
their nation ; second, a belief that Jesus was of superior 
rank to the greatest of the patriarchs and prophets. The 
apostles, including the sagacious and cultivated Paul, had 
all died, else they would have contradicted this prolific 

> John iv., .(5. 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 265 

gossip, — contradicted it as inconsistent with their own 
evident conception of the subject and servile condition of 
Jesus' human life. It grew and diverged with the telling, 
so that, when, after the apostolic age, the annalists under- 
took to write for purely personal reasons, as so-called 
Luke did for the information of some candid pagan friend, 
they wrote not as historians, not under the stress and re- 
sponsibility which accompanies authorship, but to tell in 
a vivid and striking manner what was believed at the time 
among the Christians. 

What two or three persons nearly simultaneously un- 
dertook, many others copied. The age of action had 
passed ; the novelty of faith had been lost ; the sharp 
edge of persecution and public obloquy that confronted 
discipleship had gone by. It was not disreputable, nor 
greatly dangerous to be a follower of Jesus ; and, in the 
quiet that succeeded the martyr age of the new religion, 
a public sentiment had formed itself, that stimulated and 
demanded literary expression. The poets, the story- 
tellers, the pamphleteers, began to moralize upon the com- 
pleted epoch, and to describe it, as they never do and 
never can, while the agony of an epoch is just upon 
them. So that not only these Gospels, which the Church 
has cherished, were produced, but a whole swarm of 
other Gospels, all more or less full of the picturesque and 
the miraculous. Something like twelve Gospels are 
alluded to among Christian writers of the first four cen- 
turies of the Christian era, as held in more or less repute 
among the Christians. These were imputed to each of 
the twelve apostles, and to others, known or unknown, 
in the canonical writings. Most of these Gospels have 
perished ; but a Gospel of Nicodemus, two Gospels of the 
infancy of Jesus, and the Protevangelium, attributed to 
James, the brother of Jesus, are still preserved. 

In the Protevangelium and books of the infancy of 
Jesus, whole verses are copied, the one from the other ; 
and his miraculous birth is told substantially as by Mat- 
thew and Luke, but with more minute and gross details. 
Nicodemus describes the trial and crucifixion, and recites 
copiously the conversations between Pilate and the Jews, 
and between the High Priest and elders, and a small 
body of eminent men who favored Jesus. The conver- 



266 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

sations of Pilate with Jesus, and of the High Priests, are 
so similar to that given in Matthew and John, that the 
writers of those Gospels either copied from this narrative 
called " of Nicodemus," or it is copied into that from 
them. The earthquake and rising of the dead, which 
Matthew declares attended the death of Jesus, appear 
also in the same language in this apochryphal Gospel. 8 
In the story of the infancy of Jesus, the journey to Egypt 
is told with much detail, and many absurd, and some 
indelicate miracles are recited as wrought by Jesus, while 
an infant in the arms of his mother, by the touch of his 
person, by contact with the clothes he wore, or with the 
water in which he had been washed. It is evident that 
the Nicene Council, or some other assembly of the bish- 
ops and overseers of the Church in the earlier centuries, 
were obliged, among a mass of writings, in which the 
legends of the miracles had been collected, to select 
those for approbation which seemed to be most creditable 
to his memory. Their rule of selection and exclusion 
seems to have been, not which of those stories are most 
widely believed, and which stand upon the most credita- 
ble testimony, but which are the most decent, and which 
will be received by the reason and taste of a cultivated 
and philosophical age with the readiest credence, and 
which will best minister to the edification of the Church. 
Perhaps a severer taste would have omitted, as Mark and 
John omitted, Matthew and Luke's story of the unnat- 
ural origin of Jesus, and left details of that kind to the 
condemned apochryphal writers, who seemed to have 
magnified it inordinately. Perhaps it would have left 
untold the conjuring of the devils into the herd of swine, 
as piquant only in that it amused a national prejudice of 
diet. It might, too, have considered the changing of 
water into wine at the wedding at Cana as not beneficial, 
or a work of mercy. It was the task of this primitive 
Christian criticism to select from the literary records of 
several centuries — all written on purely personal impulses 
by unauthorized persons, using without hesitation the 
artifice of imputing what they wrote to some eminent 
person — to reject what was trivial and indecorous, and 
to indorse with their sanction what was of good report. 

u Matt, jocvii., 51-53. 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 267 

As a whole, their judgment will meet the approbation of 
the cultivated modern mind. 

The wholesale curing of disease and mental derange- 
ment in Galilee, accompanied by two conspicuous in- 
stances of feeding many thousand persons to repletion 
with food scarce sufficient for ten persons, the walking 
upon the sea, the restoring of strength to bed-ridden and 
palsied men, of wholeness to those who were maimed, and 
of life, in one or two cases, to persons who had died, 
could not have happened during the reign of Tiberius 
in any part of the Roman Empire and civilized world, 
without producing greater effects than the New Testa- 
ment literature records. Still more true is this, if, in 
addition to these marvels done in Galilee, there had been 
miracles of healing in Jerusalem, and a man raised from 
the grave, after four days' burial, in the midst of a com- 
pany of intelligent and reputable citizens of that city. 

It was an age of comparative peace. Wealthy and edu- 
cated Romans, following the armies, and employed in the 
proconsular governments, in official service or in the pur- 
suit of pleasure or the study of philosophy, passed the 
whole length of the Mediterranean, and noted whatever 
was remarkable in the countries they visited. The Jews 
were not a barbarous people. To their own considerable 
culture, they superadded that of the Greeks, in whose 
language they spoke and wrote. They inhabited a region 
lying between old Greece, on one side, shorn, indeed, of 
its political, but still wielding its philosophical and artistic 
sway over the world, and Egypt on the other side, in 
which the culture of Greece had had a renaissance. The 
cosmopolitan Greek was everywhere, whose sole passion 
it was to hear and to tell some new thing." Why were 
there not about the luxurious court of Herod, under 
whose jurisdiction Jesus lived and taught, curious men, 
Greeks and Romans, who would have taken the liveliest 
interest in a man with the rumor of whose wonder-works 
of beneficial magic, that so surpassed all that the sibyls 
and soothsayers and magicians of the pagan world had 
been able to achieve, all Syria was ringing, to carry to 
Rome, to Athens and to Alexandria, some report of what 
Jesus was doing in Galilee? In every city were philoso- 

» Acts xvii., 31. 



268 OPINION'S AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

phers, dreamers, and schemers, who would have welcomed 
such a prodigy as a new revelation. And yet pagan lit- 
erature has not the slightest trace of Jesus, the wonder- 
worker. 

But, disregarding the so-called secular testimonies pre- 
served in literature, let us look carefully into the very 
records, upon which the actuality of the miracles stands, 
to see if they are consistent in setting forth effects, 
which should have naturally followed such wonderful man- 
ifestations of power as are ascribed to Jesus. 

Mankind are much more inclined to credulity than to 
scepticism. In our own age, among such enlightened 
peoples as the Americans, the English, the Germans, and 
the French, the coarsest forms of superstition, the most 
puerile and whimsical speculations, the most shallow 
personal pretensions to sanctity or to inspiration, find 
swarms of believers. And yet, in all those countries, an 
enlightened public sentiment counteracts such tenden- 
cies to delusion, and draws men back to the sphere of 
reason and common sense. But if Jesus should come to 
the most sceptical of modern cities, say to Paris, and 
should there do the works of healing, dispossession, and 
magic, including two instances of restoring the dead to 
life, which tradition declares he did in Galilee, the igno- 
rant and superstitious peasantry, the devout and fanatical 
world would follow him with faith and wonder. More 
than this, after some contempt, and a natural reluctance to 
admit the actuality of what transcended ordinary human 
experience, the philosophers would organize commissions 
to watch and examine him; and they, together with the 
scoffers and frivolous pleasure-seekers, would be coerced, 
by the stupendous and repeated exhibition, to accept him 
as a messenger of God. A palpable fact recurring so 
many times as to preclude all deception, witnessed by so 
many persons as to make defective observation impossi- 
ble, is more potent than all a priori science. Ever since 
it has been observed, the sun has risen in the east and 
moved through the skies to the west. There is the 
strongest ground for believing that this movement is a 
permanent arrangement of nature. But if, for the morn- 
ings to come, in the sight of all rational human beings 
concurring in the observation, the sun should rise in the 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 269 

west and travel toward the east, it would be legitimate 
to conclude that, for that period at least, the arrangement 
of nature had been changed. No prepossessions of sci- 
ence could stand against such a palpable and evident fact. 

But the first century was far more credulous than is 
the nineteenth. There was no logic or science which in 
the first century rendered miracles impossible. On the 
contrary, all the systems of knowledge then extant ac- 
commodated themselves to miracles, which men of all 
nationalities and creeds held to have happened at some 
time, if not in their clay and sight. The Jews were not 
the least superstitious people of the first century, nor the 
Galileans the least superstitious community among the 
Jews. 

Now, what do the gospel narratives themselves declare 
as to the effect of the mighty works of Jesus, upon the 
people in whose sight they were done ? After the death 
of Jesus, and after it was believed among his adherents, 
that they were commanded to assemble and remain in 
Jerusalem to await some most momentous event to befall 
them and all the world, the number of the believers in 
Jesus was one hundred and twenty. a As even his chief, 
chosen apostles had previously forsaken him, — Peter, his 
confidential friend, denying, with oaths and anger, that he 
had ever known him, — it is probable, that the most of 
these were attracted, not so much by their recollections 
of the miracles done in Galilee, as by the belief that 
Jesus had risen from the dead and ascended into the 
skies. 

Let it be said, this was at Jerusalem, where the public 
feeling was strongly hostile to Jesus.' There were one 
hundred and twenty Galileans, who showed their devotion 
to him by sharing his perilous mission to the sacred city, 
besides the multitudes of believers that remained at home 
in all the cities and villages of that province. It must 
be acknowledged, that only a portion of his adherents — 
generally poor people — could leave their homes and fol- 
low Jesus to Jerusalem; and, if more than a hundred of 
the more ardent disciples did so follow him, five hundred 
or a thousand might have been left at home, who believed 
in him as the Messiah. But what was to be expected 



2JO OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

was that all Galilee, all the people among whom he had 
wrought cures, cast out evil spirits, fed multitudes with- 
out any adequate provision of food, and raised the dead, 
should have believed in him as a divine being, or as a 
man specially favored and endowed by God. The records 
quite contradict this view. He is made to reproach the 
chief cities wherein his greatest miracles were done be- 
cause they believed not. He said of the multitudes, 
whom he miraculously fed, and whose sick he wholly 
cured, that they followed him only to be fed by him. He 
called his followers, those that accepted him as of God, 
a little flock, alluding to the paucity of their numbers ; and 
he said that he would not explain the parables to the 
multitudes, before whom he is said to have wrought his 
miracles, because they were not disciples, and had no 
right to be initiated into the mysteries of the kingdom of 
heaven. 

Of course, as has already been shown, the miracles at 
Jerusalem, including the raising of Lazarus, could not have 
been performed without placing Jesus in such an estima- 
tion of admiration and awe in the minds of the citizens, 
that it would have been utterly impossible for the rulers 
to subject him to the ignominy of a public trial, and for 
the people to have madly clamored for his death, when 
Pilate made overtures to pardon him. They, who accept 
the Johannic narrative as history, have also to reconcile 
with the statement of the occurrence of the miracles in 
Galilee the other statement, that, after the period when 
they are declared to have been performed, the brothers of 
Jesus did not believe on him. It is no slight confirmation 
of the view here taken, that, even regarding John's Gospel 
as a dogmatic fiction, a writer of the second or third cen- 
tury should have represented the isolation of Jesus and 
his repudiation by his countrymen in so vivid and touch- 
ing a manner. 

But did Jesus possess no remarkable powers out of 
which the legend of the miracles naturally grew ? It has 
been seen already upon how much less evidence this 
claim for him stands than does his historical identity, his 
teaching of a coming kingdom of heaven, and of an im- 
pending end of the world, and his ethical doctrines, — 
mainly of self-denial, mutual forgiveness, meekness, and 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 27 1 

almsgiving. All these facts find confirmation in the 
concurrent testimony of the whole literature of the age, 
and have entered into a faith that survives to our own 
time. But the miracles are told by unofficial and unau- 
thorized reporters, whose accounts vary in substance as 
well as in details, who are contradicted by facts, which 
they themselves report, incompatible with such occur- 
rences. Then, too, their testimony is disturbed by the 
fact that after them came a writer of marked ability and 
great celebrity, whose Gospel is either a literary fiction 
or a palpable contradiction of all the substance of their 
miraculous claims. If it be the former, it shows how 
miracles were injected into the ordinary annals of Jesus' 
career to exalt his character, and express the awe which 
his name had come to inspire. We cannot say that Mat- 
thew's and Luke's miracles may not have subserved the 
same dogmatic and literary office as those of John. 

But how, then, is the wonderful influence which Jesus 
exerted upon his contemporaries, and which finds such 
vivid expression in the Pauline and other early Christian 
writings, accounted for ? It cannot be wholly accounted 
/or as simply the effect of his personal purity, his blame- 
less conduct, and the cogency and impressive eloquence 
of his speech. These endowments would most affect 
persons of abnormal intellectual and moral culture. In 
our own times, and indeed in all times, men come to their 
own order and class, and find appreciation. But Jesus 
seems not to have powerfully affected the men of intel- 
lectual culture of his own age. He said the things he 
taught were hid from the wise and prudent, and accept- 
able to babes. He appealed ever to the simple believers, 
of easy and impulsive faith, and shunned those who were 
critical and intellectually cautious. It is certain that his 
earliest and most devoted followers were not men of 
distinguished intellectual capacity ; nor do the glimpses 
given of their speech and conduct imply that they were 
gifted with fine moral susceptibilities, or had subjected 
themselves to the discipline of much self-restraint. The 
classes he principally affected were the very classes to be 
attracted by a feat of walking upon the sea rather than by 
the subtle persuasion of a doctrine of self-denial. How is 
such effect upon such a class to be accounted for? 



272 OPINION'S AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

To assert that the miracles of Matthew and Luke were 
actually performed to the extent and upon the subjects 
they affirm is to find a cause quite too great for the 
insignificant and petty effects that flowed from it. A 
cause is wanted consonant and equivalent to the effect, 
and no more ; and the cause, since it operated mainly and 
most powerfully upon rude minds, must be something of 
like kind, if less in degree, than that which tradition has 
imputed. Miracles have been zealously affirmed in all 
ages. There are certain modes by which certain pres- 
ences can affect persons, which, not being as yet suffi- 
ciently understood or capable of harmonious adjustment 
with our accredited knowledge, are pronounced marvellous, 
abnormal, or miraculous. There are in all communities 
certain persons, having no superiority over ordinary men 
in either physical, intellectual, or moral talent or culture, 
who can, by touch or word or look, exert a power over the 
wills or the nervous organization of other persons, which 
in certain diseases results in a temporary or permanent 
cure of such disease. It is foreign to the character of 
the present discussion to consider the nature of any such 
agency. Whatever it may be, real or imaginary, there 
are few intelligent persons, upon whose observation some 
occurrences have not been thrust, that have not been 
explained by any of the ordinary laws of science. 

It is altogether probable that Jesus, with his sensitive 
and delicate organization, with a temperance and moral 
strength of will, that put all his impulses and appetites 
under the easy control of his reason and conscience, had 
also in his habitual self-possession, and moral force that 
came of a well-ordered life, a certain mastery of presence, 
a magnetic influence, that powerfully affected sensitive 
persons. His becoming aware of such power may have 
been the beginning of the prepossession, that, not only 
was the kingdom of heaven at hand, but that he was its 
king. Most of the miracles are miracles of dispossession, 
It seemed to be the belief of that age, shared by Jesus 
himself, that all dementia attended by erratic and violent 
conduct was the possession of demons, and, when the 
delirious strength of the sufferer was very great, that 
the force of many devils entered into his possession. 
The New Testament writers seem also, in several in- 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 273 

stances, to impute even deafness, dumbness, and blind- 
ness to devilish obstruction. The caprices of the insane 
are proverbial. Their intense antipathy to some per- 
sons — perhaps their nearest relatives — is sometimes con- 
trasted with the strange and soothing power of other 
persons, who can allay by a word or a look their severest 
paroxysms. Jesus might have possessed this power even 
in an unusual degree. The fame, which his personal 
sanctity established, would increase it. Its efficacious 
exercise might have been, as it is now known generally 
to be, only temporary ; for it is said of Mary Magdalene, 
that seven devils had been cast out of her. a She was in- 
sane ; Jesus had spoken, and soothed and relieved her, or, 
in the thought of the time, that demon is cast out. But, 
the cause of her malady not having been removed, she 
lapses again into madness. Alas ! exclaim the friends, 
another demon has come: where is the great prophet ? So 
the cure is repeated, until seven seasons of mania have 
been endured and relieved. It may have been a case, 
wherein had happened, according to the remembered, 
curious diagnosis of Jesus, that fatal relapse, when seven 
demons have come back to a once cleansed soul. Even 
this new peril is safely passed under his benign treat- 
ment ; and the grateful woman had become famous as a 
person relieved of a sevenfold possession. 

It is curious to note that all this report of devilish 
agency comes to us from the three earlier Gospels. When 
we read them and take our minds back to the quaint 
region and remote period which they describe, we think 
of Galilee as a country where the torment of devils was 
endemic. Some lands are plagued with fevers, some 
with malaria, some with poisonous insects or reptiles : 
this land would have been wholesome and salubrious but 
for an incursion into it of evil spirits. Devilish possession 
was one of the commonest casualties of human life — the 
local peril that would stimulate the precaution of travel- 
lers, and excite the solicitude of mothers. Even a consti- 
tution, as well endowed as that of Jesus, was not exempt 
from exposure to it, and escaped the baleful influence 
only by the constancy of his faith. 

Now, when we look through the Fourth Gospel, all this 
ghostly visitation disappears. The writer attempts to 



274 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

describe the same country, the same age, the same people, 
the career and activity among them of the same historic 
personage, but he knows nothing of devils entering into 
or being cast out of men. Seven different times the 
writer uses the word "devil," but always in our modern 
sense. He makes the Jews accuse and acquit Jesus of 
having a devil. He makes Jesus retort vigorously upon 
them that they are children of the devil. 8 But his idea 
clearly is to impute to bad men and bad actions, as we 
still do, a prompting and principle of evil, belonging per- 
manently to such natures, and for which they are to be 
held guilty. The idea of the Synoptic Gospels as clearly 
is, that to have a devil is a misfortune, that may befall a 
good man, and from which he may be relieved. 

How forcibly the conclusion impresses itself upon our 
minds, that in passing from the first three to the Fourth 
Gospel we have arrived at the ideas of another time and of 
another people ! How can the Fourth Gospel be the work 
of an intimate companion of Jesus in all his career of exor- 
cization in Galilee, who had witnessed the tortures of the 
possessed and heard their imprecations and invocations ? 
How could it have been written by that very one of all 
the twelve apostles, whose thorough belief in demoniac 
possession is disclosed so unmistakably in the Third 
Gospel ? " 

But there are other forms of disease mainly affecting 
the nervous organization, of whose subtle law science has 
as yet learned little, where what, for want of better intel- 
ligence, is named personal magnetism, produces strange 
and inexplicable curative or alleviative results. Why can- 
not this paralyzed or palsied man walk or lift his arms ? 
He is alive, his muscular structure is apparently unim- 
paired, his circulation unobstructed. The nervous con- 
nection between brain and muscle has been interrupted. 
A shock and a strong impulse of the will, such as a 
great joy, or a sudden peril, or a touch or word of certain 
persons, will restore the connection, and the imbecile 
patient will find himself able to walk. 

It is even easy to find a basis of fact for the legend 
of raising the dead. New-born infants, persons rescued 
from drowning, have often no actual life, only the capacity 

a John vi., 70; viii., 44, 48, 49; x , 20, 21 ; xiii., 2. b Luke ix., 49. 



LEGEND OF THE MIRACLES 275 

of living. There is a perfect mechanism of vitality ; but 
like a clock wound up, but not in motion, it requires an 
impulse to set it going. There are lungs with which to 
breathe, a strong heart ready to throb, a circulation ready 
to flow to the remotest members of the body, but they are 
all still and paralyzed. Without prompt external aid, that 
feeble infant, that pallid, drowned man will die ; these 
flexible muscles, valves, and veins will grow rigid and col- 
lapse, and no power can reinstate the lost vitality. But a 
gentle pressure of the chest, a warmth and stimulus min- 
istered to the arteries, and the pulse of life begins to beat, 
and strength and consciousness return to the very dead. 
Doubtless, in many acute diseases, the strength of the 
fever is abated, and the sufferer lies unconscious, apparently 
dead of nervous prostration and exhaustion. He is just 
in the situation where the slightest impulse, the gentlest 
beneficial shock, such as the presence of some greatly be- 
loved or greatly revered person might bring, would start 
the feeble pulse and summon back the fading spirit from 
the very portals of death. The ruler's daughter might 
have been at this very crisis of her fever. Jesus himself, 
in perfect good faith, as we must believe, said she was not 
dead, but asleep, exhausted, in a state, that would become 
death, if no change could be wrought. His presence, 
longed for with the last consciousness, his touch, his 
thrilling word is the needful change — the slight access 
of nervous force, which turns back to joyful life the en- 
feebled will from the death, into which a fatal sleep is fast 
deepening. The rational result followed. Those that be- 
lieved the girl was not dead, as Jesus said, rejoiced, but 
were not astonished. Those that laughed him to scorn 
insisted that she was dead, and told the story far and wide ; 
and, after the power to raise the dead was once imputed to 
him by the credulous, it was easy for rumor, growing for 
centuries, to expand it into the raising of the widow's son 
at Nain and of Lazarus at Bethany. 

Just this extent of power and no more, while it gives a 
probable foundation for the legend of miracles, harmonizes 
completely with the effects, which the evangelists them- 
selves confess the career of Jesus produced upon his 
country and his age, — that is, a few persons, mostly 
among the illiterate, believed that he was the Son of 
God ; the community generally disavowed that preten- 



276 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

sion, and either aided or acquiesced in his judicial murder. 
A solution, too, offers itself of the undoubted periodicity 
of the curative power of Jesus. All but the romantic 
John agree in the statement, that the miracle-working was 
characteristic of the earlier part of Jesus' ministry, that it 
abated, when he became more widely known in his own 
province, and that it wholly ceased, when he emerged into 
the broad light of history in coming into the publicity of 
Jerusalem. This is excused by the writers by two pleas, 
not quite consistent with each other. Jesus could not do 
miracles anywhere, where there was a serious counterac- 
tion of persons without faith. Powerful as he was, the 
critical and self-possessed spirit was always hostile to his 
energy, and rendered it inefficient. He would not do 
miracles at Jerusalem, because his purpose was, not to 
convince and convert the Jews, who would on their ac- 
count have believed on him, but to deceive them and 
harden their hearts, that, in killing him, they might pre- 
pare the way for his return in the character of king of the 
World, and ensure their own condemnation and reproba- 
tion. But it is degrading the memory of a heroic martyr 
to associate him with that unmistakable badge of charla- 
tanism and imposition, which always begins an effort at 
deception by some trick to juggle and put in bondage our 
common sense. And, if the last was the deliberate pur- 
pose of Jesus, it is hard to understand why the advent to 
the world of such a malignant spirit should ever have been 
considered an event over which mankind should con- 
gratulate itself. 

If Jesus had once the power that in this discussion has 
been conjectured, it is not difficult to account for its sub- 
sequent abatement. He lost the control of his own spirit, 
in his later faith, that Heaven had appointed him to the 
dazzling glory of kingship in a new-created world where 
awaited him the homage of saints and angels. No longer 
did he maintain that fine equipoise of soul, that harmony 
with nature and with God springing out of the unselfish 
nobility of his aspirations, and making him strong in self- 
possession and a tower of strength to the weaker men 
that attached themselves to him ; he could no longer 
speak with the spiritual force his meekness and humility 
had given him. "This kind," he once said, " goeth not 
out but by prayer and fasting." a 

a Matt, xvii., 21. 



CHAPTER X. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH. 

"The Jesus, who appears to be depicted in the original tradition of the 
disciples, is a Jew preaching to his countrymen the immediate coming of the 
kingdom of heaven, for which they were waiting, and repentance and 
amendment as the conditions of entrance to it ; protesting against the nar- 
row technical morality, and the absorbing ritual observances of the religious 
guides of the people, whose hostility he thus excites; winning at first an 
amount of popular favor that awakens the fear of the government, to avoid 
which and the hostility of the Pharisees he retires to Syro-Phoenicia; then 
publicly entering Jerusalem in the avowed character of the King of the 
Jews; renewing his conflicts with the Pharisees, and exciting the fears and 
the enmity of the chief priests and elders; delivered by them to Pilate as 
a rebel against the authority of Rome, and as such crucified. Thus viewed, 
his own proceedings and those of his adversaries appear natural and con- 
sistent, and his death to have been the inevitable consequence of his 
assumption of the character of the Messiah." — Sir Richard Hanson's 
"Jesus of History.'' 

It has become necessary, pursuing a method purely 
historic, next to consider more fully the causes of the 
death of Jesus. If history be conceived of as evolved 
according to a definite plan or by a vital growth, — one 
event being the seed and parent of another, — the appar- 
ently capricious actions of men seem to be parts of an 
orderly social and political movement, as much under 
the control of law as the succession of the seasons, the 
courses of the heavenly bodies, or the propagation, 
growth, and decay of living forms. 

In trying to find the proximate causes of the death of 
Jesus, it is not necessary to deny that there were provi- 
dential purposes subserved by the event, or that it has 
drawn after it consequences in the evolution of civilization 
disproportioned to its apparent importance. From the 
period of the Christian era, immediately succeeding the 
death of Jesus, to the present age, there have been 
devout minds that have not been able to consider the 
crucifixion in the category of human events. To them, it 
is more a conspicuous scene of divine administration, a 



2JS, OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

crisis in the divine economy, which in some way brought 
men under the dominion of new laws and new duties, and 
endowed them with higher hopes and larger destinies. 
Paul explained to the philosophers at Athens that this 
crisis had occurred in his own lifetime, previously to 
which God had been comparatively indifferent to the 
sins of men, but that from that time, taking fresh cog- 
nizance of the conduct of his creatures, he had demanded 
universal repentance. a This spectacular and typical as- 
pect of the death of Jesus, its mysterious connection with 
the enlarged vision, the enduring inheritance of life and 
happiness, which it is believed to have procured,— if not 
for all mankind, for all who strive to obtain the great 
gift,— has had some effect to lessen the world's pity for 
the sufferings of a heroic martyr, and its indignation 
against his murderers. How severely can we inveigh 
against the agents in a transaction so rich in the fruition 
of blessing and salvation to the human soul ? Leaving to 
minds capable of large generalizations and deep insfght 
these profound speculations,— if indeed there remains an 
aspect of the case that sincere faith and reverence have 
not already perceived and disclosed,— let us essay a more 
modest and less frequently attempted task. 

How came such a man as Jesus, engaged in such an 
enterprise as he is seen to have undertaken, pursuing it 
by his methods and with his character, to have made him- 
self so obnoxious to the leaders of public opinion in 
Church and State, as to fall under the cognizance of the 
civil law of his country ? Why did he so far lack popular 
sympathy and support as to have been execrated by the 
mob and forced by them to his fate, when a mild and 
vacillating governor tendered his release ? It has already 
appeared that Jesus lost his life because the chief priests 
elders, scribes, and Pharisees, the ruling classes in the 
ecclesiastical hierarchy which constituted the State, bit- 
terly hated him ; because the highest civil magistrate, the 
Roman proconsul, was induced by his love of popularity 
or provoked by jealousy, to lend his soldiery for his execu- 
tion ; and because the populace wildly clamored for his 
crucifixion. He had no friends in either of these orders ; 
and they embraced the whole public of Jerusalem upon 
which Jesus had voluntarily ventured. 

a Acts xvii., 30. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 279 

What was there about Jesus and his methods and ideas 
that gave offence to the people of his nationality and 
religion ? His gifts of healing, if possessed in the degree 
conjectured in these chapters, would have gained for him 
consideration and gratitude. If these gifts had been exer- 
cised, as the narratives of Matthew and Luke assert, in 
a wholesale obliteration of every form of mental and 
bodily disorder throughout all the cities and villages of 
Galilee, they would have secured for Jesus universal ven- 
eration and respect. The connection of his presence with 
such wonderful works as the restoration of sight to the 
blind, locomotion to the paralyzed, rational speech to the 
insane, and life to the dead, even if the mysterious agency 
by which he wrought was not understood, would have 
insured him not only against all personal violence, but 
also against all opprobrious or contemptuous epithets. 
As a worker of beneficent miracles, Jesus could not have 
been hated and persecuted. 

As a teacher of a sublime system of ethics, Jesus could 
not have excited the deadly hostility of his countrymen. 
True, the prophets of Israel who had, along with their 
exhortations to maintain the established forms of national 
worship and the integrity of faith in Jehovah, sedulously 
inculcated just dealing, mercy, and kindness to the poor, 
and personal temperance and chastity, had been perse- 
cuted by their countrymen, and some of them had been 
slain. But the prophets were patriots as well as preach- 
ers ; and they encountered hatred and persecution, either 
because the idolatrous practices they denounced so vigor- 
ously were favored by the kings or those men and women 
of their courts who chiefly controlled the affairs of state, 
or because the alliances with powerful heathen nations 
that more or less controlled the affairs of the little king- 
doms of Judah and Israel, which the prophets sometimes 
favored and sometimes condemned, had more of a political 
than of a religious character. The prophets had suffered 
persecutions, as their successors have, as politicians not 
on the winning side. The Sermon on the Mount, though 
addressed to the disciples of Jesus, was listened to by the 
people with some astonishment at the novelty of its doc- 
trines and at the intuitive confidence with which its princi- 
ples were affirmed, but not with anything like opposition/ 1 

a Matt, v., 1, 2 ; vii., 28, 2.;. 



2So OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Yet, in that discourse, Jesus had indicated very significantly 
his indisposition to maintain any fellowship with the 
ruling classes of the Church, and had subjected to a free 
handling the Mosaic ten words. But all the positive doc- 
trines of that memorable discourse had nothing in them 
to provoke opposition and hatred. They could provoke 
no other feeling than the pique with which men, confi- 
dent in their own rectitude and that their standard of 
conduct is the highest possible, resent the implication 
against themselves, when a man of deeper spiritual insight 
and loftier virtue declares a rule of life, the comprehen- 
siveness of which makes their own seem narrow and 
incomplete. Doubtless, the scribes and Pharisees per- 
ceived this implication, and returned the disparagement 
of Jesus with both anger and disdain. But, being above 
all things politic, and anxious to preserve their reputation 
as men of virtue, moderation, and devoutness, they would 
be more likely to conceal their chagrin and lay claim to 
the possession even of the more interior goodness which 
he portrayed, than to resent the establishment of a stand- 
ard of rectitude too exalted for their emulation. Indeed, 
the history of Jesus gives us several anecdotes which 
show that the scribes and Pharisees never confessed them- 
selves surprised by any of his more esoteric doctrines ; 
but that, when he uttered any profound and ideal prin- 
ciple, they even affected to be very familiar with it, and 
claimed it as a well-known feature of their own doctrine/' 
How could they then take offence when he pronounced 
a blessing on the meek, the pure, the poor, the merciful, 
the lovers of peace, the persecuted for righteousness, upon 
the true successors of the prophets whom they revered ; 
when he denounced causeless anger as murder, and a 
lascivious look as adultery ; when he declared that it was 
safe to make no defence against any violence, and wise to 
forgive all injuries; when he said that men must give 
freely to every asker, and must take no thought of how 
the body was to be fed or clothed, asking freely of God 
for every needed thing, in confidence that it would be 
given ? These principles might be criticised as imprac- 
ticable and visionary; but in no age of the world, where 
they have been from time to time reproduced as the basis 

1 Mark xii., 28, 32-34. 






HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 28 1 

of an ideal system of life, have they excited derision and 
satire, much less rage and hatred. 

Did Jesus become obnoxious to the people of his time 
by the claim which he made to be the Messiah of the 
nation, and the king of a kingdom that was to supplant the 
kingdoms of the world and reconstruct the order of soci- 
ety and the constitution of the physical universe ? There 
had been Messiahs before Jesus, and there were Messiahs 
after him. It was a pretension, which in itself flattered 
the national pride of Israel and fed the quenchless hope, 
that has characterized that strange race through the long 
history of its slavery and depression. Had the Messianic 
idea of Jesus been more in accord with the prophetic fore- 
shadowing, and with the popular expectation, his claim to 
be the Messiah would have given him prestige and au- 
thority, at least commensurate with the pretenders that 
preceded and succeeded him, each of whom drew after 
him a numerous following. 11 

The kingship of Jesus, if it had anything ominous 
about it, threatened the security of the Roman power. 
The Jewish hierarchy, after they had come to hate Jesus, 
did all they could to turn the eyes of the civil power to 
the political dangers which his heresy portended. How 
futile the effort was, how utterly indifferent the sceptical, 
luxurious petty sovereigns, who held the vice-royalties of 
Judea and Galilee, were to the danger, is apparent in the 
Scriptural traditions. It is highly improbable that either 
Herod or Pilate ever made the ministry of Jesus, and his 
progress through their respective provinces, proclaiming 
himself the king of a kingdom to be established during 
his own generation in Jerusalem, the subject of a per- 
sonal, still less of an official communication to Caesar at 
Rome. If they had done this, perhaps some memoranda 
of him might have crept into secular history. Matthew 
tells, indeed, that Herod of Judea had so far interested 
himself in the Hebrew prophetic literature that, learning, 
by the exposition of the scribes, that the Messiah was 
to be born in Bethlehem, and by a communication from 
certain Magi, who came to Jerusalem from the far East, 
that the Messiah had already been born, he took the pre- 
caution to procure the slaughter of all the children of 



282 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Bethlehem under two years of age. a But as no other 
Gospel contains this story, as the older copies of Mat- 
thew's Gospel omit it, and as a full history of the crimes 
and cruelties of Herod's reign, written by no friendly 
hand, does not recount this massacre, it is not likely to 
have occurred. 

Herod of Galilee imprisoned, and afterward murdered 
John the Baptist, but this was the result of the fury of a 
wicked woman whom John had provoked by the plainness 
of speech with which he had denounced her incestuous 
connection with the king. 1 ' Jesus, though he was fearless 
in bringing home his rule of rectitude to the life and 
thought of the persons with whom he was in actual con- 
ference, rarely made personal application of his doctrines 
to particular individuals. As Herod had slain John, 
whose teachings so closely resembled those of Jesus, the 
Galilean Pharisees tried to alarm Jesus by telling him that 
Herod was seeking his life. The slight apprehension 
this, doubtless, false information caused in the mind of 
Jesus, and the confident and contemptuous answer he sent 
back show that Herod had taken no notice whatever of 
Jesus' enterprise. It would have been apparently as 
easy for the king to imprison and slay Jesus, as it was to 
rid himself of his compatriot and master. The Roman of- 
ficial evidently did not suspect that Jesus was of the least 
political consequence. 

How little the eager suspicions of the elders and chief 
priests affected the more mild and philosophical Pilate, 
the proconsul of Judea, is apparent in the Biblical record. 
Jesus was delivered to him as a plotter against Csesar, a 
pretender for the throne of Judea; and Pilate, as the 
sequel will show, could not consider the empire of his 
master seriously threatened by a hallucination that seemed 
to him so absurd. 

As Jesus never encountered any danger from the Ro- 
man government either of Galilee, where he lived, or of 
Judea, whither he betook himself, so it is to be said, that, 
apparently, while he remained in Galilee, he was never in 
any situation of formidable peril from any quarter. Luke 
alone tells of a fierce and sudden tumult, which was caused 
in Nazareth during the earliest days of his more public 

nMatt. ii., 3-5, 16. b Matt, xiv., 3-12. c Luke xiii., 31-33. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 283 

life, when a mob seized him and bore him toward a prec- 
ipice to throw him down. The provocation given by 
Jesus seems to be quite inadequate to cause such an ex- 
hibition of animosity, unless words were spoken which 
the record has not given us, though doubtless the inflam- 
mable fanaticism of those provincial Jews exceeded the 
limits of modern comprehension. Whatever the provo- 
cation was, and however great the tumult, it was a mere 
temporary excitement, only possible in an isolated Jewish 
village. It was not preconcerted or connected with any 
designs against Jesus formed among the scribes and 
elders of the principal neighboring cities, and it sub- 
sided as rapidly as it rose ; for it seems Jesus continued 
to make Nazareth his home, and, so far from being ever 
molested afterward, must have considerably gained in 
public consideration, and secured in the end the good 
opinion of his own quite numerous kinsmen. The 
elders of the Nazarene synagogue were probably quite 
as indignant at the unwonted presumption of a young 
carpenter undertaking to read and interpret the Script- 
ures, as they were at the disparaging imputations of his 
comments." 

How much the Galilean and Judean communities were 
disturbed by the claim of Jesus to be the expected Mes- 
siah may therefore be exactly determined by the effect it 
had upon the jealous and suspicious Roman proconsu- 
late whose business it was to watch and crush, at its first 
outbreak, every effort at national independence. If Rome 
did not care that Jesus was making a progress through 
the land in some kind of royal state, as King of the Jews, 
it may be certain that there was nobody to care. 

As he was in no danger from Herod, an irresponsible 
and capricious tyrant, so he was in no danger from the 
elders, scribes, and Pharisees, during the time after his 
baptism that he dwelt in Galilee, generally believed to be 
about three years, but more probably only a few months. 
The Pharisees, as a general thing, treated him with defer- 
ence and respect. They addressed him as Rabbi, giving 
full credit to his prophetic office. They extended to him 
social courtesies and invited him to their feasts. They 
referred to him questions of ritual practice, of the con- 

»Luke iv., 16-30. 



284 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

struction of their written law, of general casuistry, and of 
political expediency and duty; and we are not obliged to 
adopt the evident prejudice of the evangelists, that these 
questions were always put craftily and disingenuously for 
the sake of embarrassing and discrediting him. a It was 
not the practice of the bishops, canons, and curates of the 
English Church to form a part of the promiscuous audi- 
ences which listened in the fields and in barns to the 
preaching of Bunyan, Naylor, and Fox. It was never 
known that leading Presbyterian doctors of divinity or 
Evangelical presidents of theological seminaries in the 
United States condescended to hold newspaper contro- 
versies with Joseph Smith, or with the itinerant Second 
Adventist missionaries. Religious bigotry must have 
been far more rife in Galilee in the first century than 
it is in either Old or New England in the nineteenth 
century; and the fact that the scribes and Pharisees 
listened to Jesus, held colloquies with him, and frequently 
approved and commended his doctrines, indicates on their 
part a position toward him far more respectful than 
modern Orthodoxy maintains toward modern dissent. 

While this was the attitude of the religious classes 
toward Jesus, what was his attitude toward them ? What 
overtures did the Messenger and Son of Jehovah make to 
the priesthood of Jehovah, to that body of men who, 
whatever may be justly imputed against them, had been, 
as far as can now be seen, exceedingly zealous for the 
Lord of Hosts, and for the integrity of his worship. To 
them, it was certainly due that the last traces of idolatry 
had been eliminated from the cultus of their race, and 
that the people had been thoroughly schooled into the 
practice of a decorous and decent morality. When or 
where was the grace of the Gospel offered to scribes and 
Pharisees ? Why should Christianity have been left to 
advance slowly through nineteen centuries with the em- 
phatic protest, borne steadily against it, of the most de- 
vout and religious race the world has ever known? 

The antipathy of John the Baptist to both the popular 
sects, the Pharisees and Sadducees, has already been spoken 
of. It has never been known in the world, that a re- 
former and teacher of a new faith did not seek to make 

a Mark xii., 13, 14, 19, 28, 32-34; Luke vii., 36; x., 25; xi., 53, 54; xiv., 1. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 285 

converts ; but, when this ascetic preacher saw multitudes 
of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he 
was disturbed and disgusted. He addressed them as a 
generation of vipers, and told them that their damnation 
was so assured, that it had not occurred to him to give 
them any warning to avoid it. a This pre-judging of their 
case, this shutting in their faces the door of hope, shows 
how truculent and intolerant was the spirit of this ascetic 
prophet. Perhaps Paul, then a zealous student of the law 
at the feet of Rabbi Gamaliel, going, with other Pharisees, 
to hear what the preacher had to say, might have been 
stunned and repelled, and had his orthodox faith con- 
firmed, by this ungracious rebuff. From such a master 
Jesus himself received baptism, and seemed ever after- 
ward to have had his memory in reverence. He insisted 
that he was the most enlightened of the prophets, and 
that no greater man had been born of woman." 

When John had been cast into prison, Jesus began him- 
self to preach, c and, in his first discourse, indicated his ut- 
ter hostility to the whole teaching and moral standard of 
the Pharisees. He reviewed the ten words of the law 
with the expositions and deductions the scribes had put 
upon them, and declared them superficial and inadequate ; 
and he said plainly : " Unless your righteousness exceeds 
the pattern prescribed by the scribes and Pharisees, ye 
shall in no wise enter the kingdom." d No more emphatic 
announcement could be made that the grace of his gospel 
was not for the scribes and Pharisees, or for any person 
accepting their faith and conforming to their practices. 
He evidently meant the scribes and Pharisees, when in 
the same discourse he bade his disciples beware of false 
prophets. They have, he said, the clothing of sheep, but 
inwardly they are ravening wolves. 

Early in his public career, he said, that people from all 
corners of the earth should come into his kingdom, but 
that the children of the kingdom — that is, the Jewish 
Church — should be cast into the outer darkness.* That 
the Jewish Church had a certain right of primogeniture, as 
the first begotten of Jehovah, Jesus seemed at times fully 
to recognize. Thus, when he sent out his twelve disciples 

a Matt, iii., 7. b Matt, xi., 1 r. c Luke iii., 19, 20. 

<1 Matt, v., 20. eMatt. vii., 15. f Matt, viii., 11, 12. 



286 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

to proclaim the kingdom of heaven, he told them : " Go 
not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the 
Samaritans enter ye not ; but go rather to the lost sheep of 
the house of Israel." * The lost sheep were the poor, the 
sinners, those that were oppressed and bowed under labor, 
those whom the scribes despised, those whom the Phari- 
sees in their self-righteous prayers thanked God they were 
not like. b But, though Jesus sent out his disciples to make 
converts among the people of his own nation, he evidently 
had slight hopes of the success of their mission. For he 
said : " Shake off the dust of your feet against the city 
or house, that will not receive you ; it shall be more tol- 
erable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, 
than for that city ; c and ye shall be brought before gov- 
ernors and kings, and scourged in the synagogues, and 
hated of all men as representatives of me."' 1 For his own 
part, Jesus said, almost with the emphasis and exclusive- 
ness of John the Baptist, that he came not to call the 
righteous, — meaning the religious and plausibly moral 
Pharisees, — but sinners to repentance/' 

The first actual contact between Jesus and the scribes 
and Pharisees was, when certain of their numbers went 
down from Jerusalem to Galilee, doubtless as a committee 
of the body, to inquire into his teachings and practice. 
With some evident awe of his known eloquence and dig- 
nity of presence, they attribute the conduct, which they 
wish to censure, not to him, or to his example, but to the 
fault of his disciples. " Why do thy disciples" they ask, 
"transgress the tradition of the elders in eating bread 
without laving their hands?" Never was a reply more 
crushing and personal, from a mind fully prepossessed with 
a judgment adverse to their characters and doctrines, — 
" Why do ye transgress the commandments of God with 
your traditiojis ? " f Then he called them hypocrites and 
said, they were those described by Isaiah as worshipping 
Jehovah with their mouths, while their hearts were far 
from him. So possessed was he with the resentment, 
which their petty prying into the trivial table manners of 
his household had justly excited in him, that, after the 
committee had left him, he denounced the whole body of 

a Matt, x., 5, 6. t>Matt. xi., 5, 28 ; Luke xviii., 1 1. c Matt, x., 14, 15. 
"Matt, x., 18. t'Matt. ix., 13. 1' Matt, xv., 2, 3. 






HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 287 

Pharisees to the multitude, as blind leaders of the blind, 
to be let alone, and, unled and unwarned, to fall into the 
ditch. 3 

This attitude toward the leading religious sects cannot 
certainly be considered as conciliatory ; but, during all the 
life in Galilee, it did not appear to have subjected Jesus 
to any personal danger. The invidious multitude, who 
like to see men conspicuous for their social position and 
repute, satirized and derided, and who doubtless listened 
to the derogatory epithets with applause, probably liked 
Jesus the better for the freedom of his censures ; and the 
subjects of them, who were not left to hearsay to learn 
the ill-repute they stood in with him, bore them with 
remarkable good nature. On the whole, the record does 
not impress us with the idea that the Pharisees were vin- 
dictive ; and we acquire confidence in the statement of 
Josephus, who says of them that "they follow the con- 
duct of reason, and what that prescribes to them, as good 
for. them they do." b 

Why, then, did not Jesus remain in Galilee, where he 
was certainly gaining in reputation and influence, and 
where he was in no peril ? His own rule would have 
justified such conduct, for he had told his disciples in 
sending them out, " If they persecute you in one city, flee 
to another."* They were not to resist, but to succumb to 
and avoid danger. Peter, too, as we see, was quite alive 
to the perils of the mission to Jerusalem ; and, though he 
received a crushing rebuke for his advice, it was evidently 
given with a most affectionate solicitude for his master's 
safety. d 

But Jerusalem was not to be avoided with any thought 
even of saving life. So terrible had been the silent 
struggles of Jesus with his own temperamental apprehen- 
sion of death, as the natural result of the enmity he had 
already excited among that class that were all-powerful in 
Jerusalem, that when it arose again, albeit in the familiar 
voice of his admired friend, it seemed the spirit of the 
world — the insidious voice of Satan himself — and he set 
himself to crush it. He had diligently counted the cost. 
No king, he said, goes to war against another king until 

» Matt, xv., 1-14. b Jos. Antiq. xviii., 1, 3. c Matt, x., 23. 
dMatt. xvi., 22, 23. eMatt. xvi., 25. 



288 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

he first considers his own force and that of his enemy; no 
man undertakes to build a house until he sits down first 
and counts the cost." Counting the cost is the very thing 
which kings and house-builders have ever been reproached 
for not doing ; but Jesus was evidently putting into coun- 
sels for others exhortations he was in fact addressing to 
himself. He had diligently studied the prophecies, and 
meditated much and long upon all that the Messiahship 
involved. The king must go to Zion, and go, too, in the 
days of his humiliation, in the meekness of his servitude. 
But Messiah must be cut off. The Shepherd must be 
smitten; the sheep must be scattered. He must make 
his grave with the wicked. But afterward he will come 
as a conqueror and a judge, with legions of holy angels 
and the glory of his Father. So, to fulfil his destiny, he 
must go to Jerusalem, — go sadly, treading alone the 
wine-press of the wrath of God. He fears not the peril of 
rulers, — of the wolves in sheep's clothing, — of the priest 
and elders, and the powers of the Gentiles, who will 
scourge and put him to death. He will go to defy them, 
to provoke them to the very controversy, that shall 
insure his deliverance to death. Jesus undertook the 
journey to Jerusalem in order that he might die at the 
hands of his countrymen. 

He took with him his twelve disciples, and the friendly 
Galilean women, who charged themselves with the ex- 
pense of his support. b As it was the occasion of one of 
the annual national festivals, a considerable part of his ad- 
herents must have accompanied him with their families 
out of the cities of Galilee. But, as the Jews were gener- 
ally at the same season going up to the Passover, there 
was nothing in his expedition to excite particular atten- 
tion. Among the multitudes, that went up to Jerusalem, 
only his confidential friends knew the sad errand that took 
him thither. He went slowly and indirectly, crossing the 
Jordan and avoiding Samaria, the direct route, and doubt- 
less the thoroughfare of most of the pilgrims. A man 
does not travel rapidly or cheerfully on his way to a vol- 
untary death. No plots of the Pharisees annoyed him, 
and no spies from Jerusalem watched his movements. 
Probably the whole city was profoundly ignorant of his 

a Luke xiv., 28, 33. b Luke viii., 2, 3. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 289 

plans and unacquainted with his person. The citizens 
knew as little that their long-expected king and deliverer 
was actually approaching Zion, as that they themselves 
would in a few days take upon their souls the guilt of the 
blood of the chiefest of their prophets, and earn for them- 
selves and their children to the remotest times the execra- 
tions of mankind. 

But, if there was hesitation, there was no pusillanimity 
and no swerving from his high purpose on the part of 
Jesus. Up through the wilderness of Jordan, where he 
had visited John and received baptism, where, later, curi- 
ous multitudes had followed him out of the towns and 
villages of Galilee, and done honor to him as a prophet, 
he travelled, more depressed than weary, strengthening 
his spirit by the assurance that the Scriptures must be 
fulfilled, and by the silent prayer, Not my will, but thine 
be done. 

In another connection, the triumphal entry into Jerusa- 
lem has already been mentioned. It was not ostentation 
on the part of Jesus, nor does it seem he derived any 
augury of hope from the demonstration. He had already 
made up his mind that he must be rejected of that wicked 
generation, and be put to death ; but the Scriptures must 
be fulfilled, and it was prophesied of Zion's King that he 
should come meek and sitting upon the foal of an ass. b 
It was but a meagre pageant. The Galileans, that were of 
his company, cast palm-branches in the way, and the chil- 
dren shouted: " Hosannah ! blessed is He that cometh in 
the name of the Lord 7" c But the city itself made no re- 
sponse, only it asked : Who is this ? as it would not have 
asked had he been for months during two or three years 
an habitue' of the temple, conducting famous arguments 
with the Rabbis, the populace inclining to his side. Jeru- 
salem does not know his person or his name. It is an- 
swered by those of his party : " This is Jesus, the Prophet 
from Nazareth of Galilee" ^ His name, which was a very 
common one among the people at the time, does not iden- 
tify him ; and he must be distinguished by the name of his 
town. Even Nazareth is so little known that it must be 
further told that Nazareth is a city of Galilee. Then it 

a Matt, xxvii., 25. b Matt, xvi., 21 ; xxi., 5. 
cMark xi., 8-10; Matt, xxi., 15, 16. d Matt, xxi., n, Revised N. T. 



29O OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

might have occurred to some of the more intelligent 
scribes, — he is Jesus, of whose dealings with the pos- 
sessed we heard a while ago, when we sent messengers to 
observe his methods. He the Messiah ! Zion's King, 
that was to come from Bethlehem of Judea, come out of 
Galilee ! There is no warrant of Scripture for that. 

Still considering the implications of such a procession 
announcing itself with such cries, it must be said that the 
Jews submitted to it with rather remarkable patience. 
But the pageant proceeds directly to the temple itself, and 
Jesus, dismounting at its portals, arms himself with a whip 
of cords, and casts out all them that sold and bought, and 
overthrew the tables of the money-changers and the seats 
of them that sold doves. a The conduct is somewhat inex- 
plicable, not only that it seems to be in quite another 
spirit from the prophetic meekness, which he was attempt- 
ing to illustrate, but because it seems to be foreign to all 
the ideas of Jesus to undertake any reform whatever of 
the temple service. He had not distinguished himself 
by the assiduity or punctuality of his attendance upon the 
temple services and sacrifices. Certainly all his influence 
had been in the direction of a substitution of morality for 
worship, and he had claimed the right in a matter, so fun- 
damental as the Sabbath, to substitute his own authority 
for the letter of the law. b There was much in the details 
of such a mode of worship as the Jews had perpetuated to 
disgust a sensitive disposition like that of Jesus. The 
eager crowds of men, women and children, the jostling 
of the multitudes of large and smaller beasts used in sac- 
rifices and feasts, the ungentle hand of the slayers, the 
terror and cries of the victims, the reek and horror of 
wholesale slaughter — far less concealed and mitigated 
than in well-regulated modern abattoirs — would seem to 
have moved an innovator like Jesus to denounce the whole 
service as superstitious and savage. But what Jesus did 
was to break up an arrangement really in the interest 
of decency, and an -arrangement not only convenient and 
sensible in itself, but expressly permitted by the law. 
For it is enacted in the second book of the law, that " If 
the way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able 
to carry the firstlings of thy flocks consecrate to Jehovah, 
or the place be too far from thee, which the Lord thy God 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 29 1 

shall choose to set his name there, then thou shalt turn 
it into money and bind up the money in thy hand, and 
shalt go unto the place, which the Lord shall choose, and 
shall bestow that money for oxen, for sheep, and for 
wine." a These sellers of doves very properly met that 
want, and the money-changers were there to accommo- 
date the sellers and buyers with coins of convenience 
in their purchases. Doubtless there were extortionate 
practices attending this traffic, which merited the punish- 
ment inflicted ; but of these the record contains no hint, 
nor does the extrusion seem to have been accomplished 
upon any other ground than the abatement of a profana- 
tion of the temple service. 

The scribes and Pharisees might have overlooked the 
triumphal entry, and the claim to be the King of Zion ; 
but "Who is this," they asked, "that undertakes to control 
the practices of the temple, and overthrows the statutes 
of Moses?" They were seriously disturbed. b They still 
refrain however from violence. They do not arrest Jesus. 
They do not even interrupt him. Either moderation or 
timidity seemed to have influenced the chief priests and 
elders of the people, or this interference with the national 
worship would have been promptly resented. Doubtless, 
too, they deferred somewhat to the universal reverence, in 
which the office of prophet was generally held. Whatever 
may have been their motive, they contented themselves 
with a decorous inquiry addressed to the Galilean Rabbi : 
" Who gave thee authority to do these things ? " Jesus says 
he will answer this question, if his interrogators will first 
tell him, whether or not the mission of John the Baptist 
was divine. The relevancy of John's authority to the 
question of his own was apparently no more obvious to 
the scribes than it is to us ; having consulted among 
themselves, and over-cautious to avoid the logical dilemma 
they might have been driven to by the keen intelligence 
of Jesus, they decline to answer, and, overawed by his 
courage and resources, forthwith abandon their inquisi- 
tion into his proceedings. 

But though his enemies retire dismayed from the con- 
troversy, Jesus on his side continues it, and shifts the 
accusation from his to their proceedings. He is evidently 
in no mood to make explanations, or to proffer concilia- 

" Dcut. xiv., 24-2^. !> Matt, xxi., 15. <= Matt, xxi., 23-27. 



292 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

tions. Indifferent to the effect his words may have to 
exasperate the ecclesiastical rulers, he tells against them 
two parables." The first was of two sons, one of whom 
had promised obedience, but neglected to keep his prom- 
ise ; the other was insolent at first, but repented and com- 
plied with his father's will. This was the lesson of the 
story : publicans and harlots believed John, and repented ; 
you scribes and Pharisees, professors of righteousness, 
repented not, when the preacher of righteousness came to 
you. The other parable was of the householder, whose 
servants, and finally whose son were slain by his wicked 
tenants. But the owner will come and destroy those 
wicked men, and will let his vineyard to those who will 
render him the fruits in their season. And, said Jesus, 
the kingdom of God, which John offered, and you rejected, 
shall be taken from you, calling yourselves the chosen of 
the Lord, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits 
thereof.* This was a gratuitous taunt, if, when they had 
in fact come to John seeking his baptism, he had driven 
them away, saying they were children of vipers, who had 
never been invited to repentance. b 

If the priests and elders were angry when they came to 
Jesus, they go away more angry ; and they are now ready 
to lay hands upon him. But caution prevails. They do 
not yet know how much support he has among the people. 
The demonstration in the streets, in which the Galileans 
were active, may have made friends everywhere among 
the people. It seems prudent to wait a few days to see 
how Jerusalem itself will receive her latest prophet. 
Meantime, the hierarchy attempt to embroil him with 
the Roman authorities or to prejudice him with the 
people, by asking if it be lawful to pay tribute ; and Jesus 
in his answer plainly commits himself against the patriotic 
party.* 1 Then, the Sadducees put to him their case against 
the resurrection, which Jesus evades. 6 The discomfiture 
of the Sadducees pleases the Pharisees, who with great 
show of deference ask him : " Which is the chief of the 
commandments?" evidently referring to the decalogue. 

a Matt, xxi., 2S-32. I> Matt, hi., 7. c Matt, xxii., 46; Luke xx., 19. 
tlMatt. xxii., 16-22. e Matt, xxii., 23-32. 

* If Jesus had himself during a period of three years preached the gospel of repentance 
in Jerusalem, as the Fourth Gospel represents, why did he not reproach the priests and elders 
(or the rejection of his own message, rather than for the rejection of the message of John? 
These words of Jesus seem to carry a strong implication that all that Jerusalem had heard 
of the doctrine of the kingdom of heaven it had heard from the lips of John the Baptist. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 293 

Jesus indicates neither one of the commandments as 
superior to the rest ; but declares that supreme love to 
God and equal love to men — a sentiment wholly above 
the grade of the ten words attributed to Moses, found 
in a prophetic writing of a much later age than his — is 
the basis of the whole law and prophets. a 

When the Pharisees and Sadducees were withdrawn, 
Jesus turned to the multitude and to his disciples and 
proceeded to utter that invective against the scribes and 
Pharisees which is the summary of his judgment against 
them. He charged them with hypocrisy, deceit, oppres- 
sion, ostentation, ambition, extortion, and blasphemy. He 
called them fools, blind guides, children of hell, the pre- 
destined to damnation. They were full of hypocrisy and 
all uncleanness ; and there was no future for them, but to 
fill up the measure of their iniquity ; for he declared them 
guilty of all the blood of the good men, that had been 
slain in the world, which God would require at their 
hands. b 

This ended his controversy with his enemies. He had 
done and said whatever was possible to make them impla- 
cable and unforgiving, and there is nothing before him 
now, but to take leave of his followers and explain to 
them more fully the nature of the new era that is about to 
open upon the world in which he and they are to be 
exalted to the right hand of power, while the glory and 
pomp of kingdoms and churches is to fall in darkness 
and condemnation. 

The whole narrative indicates that these events fol- 
lowed each other in rapid succession. Doubtless Jesus 
seized on the occasion of so many Galileans going to the 
Passover to go himself with his disciples. We can under- 
stand something of the economy of the little sect. The 
twelve had been required to leave all and follow him. 
They had probably sold their possessions and paid the 
proceeds over to Judas, one ot their number who was 
their treasurer.' 1 The conjecture of the Johannic narra- 
tive that Judas was an embezzler of the small treasure of 
the company of Jesus is not approved by the more reliable 
biographers ; but as it is quite probable that one of the 
twelve was intrusted with their funds, it is fairly supposa- 

■ Matt, xxii., 34-40. '> Matt, xxiii. c Matt, xxiv., 3-51 ; xxv. d John jriii., 29; xii. , 6. 



294 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

ble that Judas was in fact the treasurer, as John declares. 
The more wealthy converts supported the poorer, and 
Jesus was the especial charge of certain devout women 
who seemed to have some property. While the disciples 
were on their missions of healing and preaching, they 
lived upon the hospitality of the people who chose to re- 
ceive them.' 1 Such an establishment might be supported 
indefinitely in Galilee, where the habits of the people were 
simple and the means of living abundant. But trans- 
ported to a populous city in a mountainous district, where 
everything was brought in from outlying fields and sold 
to the citizens who were priests, teachers, public officers, 
traders, artisans, and laborers, and where Jesus is not 
known to have secured a single avowed adherent, even 
the little band of believers could not have maintained 
themselves upon their own means for very many days, 

Jesus betakes himself at night-fall to Bethany. This 
may have been his custom every night that he remained 
at liberty. 1 ' He takes that much precaution for his safety ; 
not that he does not even court death, but because he will 
have his enemies proceed against him publicly, officially, 
and by daylight, and not by secret assassination or abduc- 
tion. Mary and Martha, friends and believers, had made 
his acquaintance on his way to Jerusalem ; and they are 
now honored in having him for a guest. At Bethany, and 
just before his arrest, occurred an incident, of which men- 
tion must be made. d A woman came into his presence, 
and with a freedom, which seems to have excited the sus- 
picion of the disciples, anointed either the head or the 
feet of Jesus with a costly perfume. By what a cruel 
disagreement of the annalists has she been robbed of 
the fame, she was assured she should have throughout 
the world for her delicate and sympathetic gift ! For 
Matthew and Mark do not even give her name ; and 
Luke casts against her the cruel imputation that she was 
a sinner. Only the poet of the Fourth Gospel could see 
in the touching incident, so contradictorily told down to 
his day, something to be made more pathetic by his 
artistic genius. So he makes the unnamed woman — the 
sinner of the Third Gospel — no less a person, than the 

"Matt, x., 9-1 1. b Matt, xxi., 17 ; Luke xxi., 37. c Matt, xxvi., 4 ; Luke xx., 20. 
d Matt, xxvi., 6; Markxiv.,3; Lukevii.,37; John xii., 1-8. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 295 

gentle and refined Mary, sister of him, that had been 
raised from the dead, she whose saintly devotion Jesus 
had, according to Luke's narrative, so pointedly con- 
trasted with the sordid housekeeping carefulness of 
Martha. All the evangelists evidently refer to the same 
transaction, too eccentric and unique in the surprise it 
occasioned, too well identified in the accompanying 
words of Jesus, to have happened more than once. 

Whether the disciples kept together, and lived upon 
what Judas could buy with the not-exhausted fund of the 
company, or whether they scattered and found friends 
among the poor of the city or of the suburbs cannot be 
known. They met Jesus every day, and must have been 
exceedingly excited by the boldness, with which he con- 
fronted the priests and the elders, and by the stupendous 
disclosures he was making to them of the events of the 
kingdom of heaven on the eve of being established. 

When we read of those colloquies of Jesus with the Phar- 
isees and Sadducees, we must not infer that the whole 
body of Pharisees and Sadducees in Jerusalem, or even 
the more prominent leaders and elders of the sects, took 
part in the discussions. It has been seen that on his arri- 
val at Jerusalem the person of Jesus was not known to 
the citizens. a It is now to be noted, that the chief priests 
and elders were in the same condition of ignorance. So 
entirely aloof was Jesus and his company from the cogni- 
zance of these high dignitaries of the Church, that, though 
they had doubtless heard, that a rabble of men, led by one 
Jesus from Galilee, had marched in fantastic procession 
to the temple, where the same man had interfered with 
violence in the practices of the worshippers, that he had 
been quite too self-possessed for the wits of some of their 
own number, and some Sadducees, who had ventured to 
hold an argument with him, and had bitterly denounced 
themselves to the multitude, they had not seen or heard 
him. No description of his person had been given, 
whereby he could be identified among the thousand 
strangers from Galilee. So they were compelled to use 
money to induce one of his own chosen disciples to accom- 
pany the officers, and indicate him to be arrested. b This 
circumstance shows most conclusively, how really isolated 

"■ Matt, xxi., 10. '> Mark, xiv., 10, 11, 



296 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Jesus vas in Jerusalem, and how little impression his 
teachings and demonstrations had made outside of the 
little jircle of men and women, who had accompanied him 
from his own country. 

I: was clearly the preference of the priests, elders, and 
scribes to put Jesus to death secretly.* But his precau- 
tion in keeping himself surrounded with a company of his 
followers by day, and withdrawing at night-fall, defeated 
this purpose, and compelled them to resort to the legal 
forms of procedure. Judas' treachery in the mean time 
opens the way, and Jesus is at last identified, on the night 
of the Passover, b — the only night, that he cannot retire 
from the city, — in the garden of Gethsemane outside the 
walls, where doubtless he knew that his enemies would be 
sure to trace him. Late in the night-time, he is carried 
before Caiaphas the High Priest, with whom the scribes 
and elders are assembled in anticipation of the arrest. 
Both parties had evidently mistaken the temper of the 
Jewish mob. For days, the exasperation of the priest- 
hood has been at its height, and they are ready to accom- 
plish his assassination ; but they are afraid to subject 
him to a public trial, lest the populace might interfere for 
his rescue. So they have assembled secretly and unlaw- 
fully in the night, and have sent a body, not of Roman ■ 
soldiers, nor of regular police, but of hired ruffians, — an 
improvised gang, armed with swords and staves, having 
Judas for a guide — to find Jesus among the celebrants of 
the Passover, and bring him before them. Their further 
proceedings will be determined by the manifestations of 
popular feeling. If the multitude incline to favor him, 
they will make away with him secretly. If the multitude 
take the side of the priesthood and scribes, then they 
will proceed regularly, and obtain his condemnation and 
execution under the forms of law. 

Unexpectedly, the mob have got wind of what is going 
on ; and they join the ruffians, and go to Gethsemane 
with them to find Jesus. He is manifestly chagrined and 
disheartened by their appearance.' 1 A brave and devoted 
man may make up his mind to die, to accomplish some 
lofty purpose, but he will welcome every obstacle thrown 
in the way of his death ; and he will hope to the last that 

, 1 ' M .in . -.xvi., 47. Matt, xxvi., 57. '1 Luke xxii., 47-53. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 297 

some angel of mercy from heaven may intervene for his 
rescue. Jesus had noted the multitude, who perhaps ap- 
plauded, when, standing in the temple, he had pronounced 
the scribes and Pharisees a generation of vipers, the 
progeny of hell ; and he may have drawn some augury of 
hope from their apparent favor. When the posse of the 
priesthood came upon him in the garden, he seems to 
have had no reproaches for the armed ruffians, none even 
for his own trusted disciple, who had betrayed to them his 
place of hiding ; but he turned to the multitude with 
words like these : I sat daily with you teaching in the 
temple, and hoped you were not enemies, as ye laid no 
hands upon me ; and are ye now come out with swords 
and staves as against a thief to take me ? a Yes, the 
appearance was delusive : the mob were on the side of 
his enemies ; and now even the courage of the twelve 
failed, and all but Peter fled and hid themselves. 13 He 
was bold enough to follow at a distance, hoping to pass 
himself off as one of the mob by telling a lie. c His Gali- 
lean dialect, however, betrayed him, — another evidence 
that no Judaeans had believed on Jesus. Peter is in no 
danger : there is on the part of the hierarchy no purpose 
to molest any of the company but their chief and leader. 
Now, for the first time, and only for a few hours, Jesus 
comes out from the privacy of his provincial life into such 
publicity as the official world of government and the courts 
can give to illumine his conduct. Here, if anywhere, in 
the evangelic narratives, we come upon veritable history. 
Accordingly, we find a more substantial agreement in the 
different traditions of his trial and execution than we find 
in the traditions of his doctrines or of the incidents of 
his preceding life. That there was a Jesus Christ, who 
lived among the Jews of Palestine during the earlier years 
of the Roman Empire, and that he was put to death by 
crucifixion, are the best known facts in reference to him. 
How uncertain all the data we have of his life, character, 
and teaching are, may be inferred from the grave differ- 
ences in the histories, that are extant, as to the proceed- 
ings at his trial, as to how his conviction was reached, 
and how sentence against him was executed. Tt could 
not well have been otherwise. His trusted friends for- 

"Matt. xxvi., 55. bMatt. xxvi., 56-58. c Matt, xxvi., 69-74. 



298 OPINIONS AXD CHARACTER OF JESUS 

sook him in apprehension for their own safety. None 
of the New Testament writers seem to have had access to 
any record or official documents, in which the proceedings 
against him, and the final judgment are set forth, if 
indeed there were any such official documents. As to 
what was formally charged against Jesus, by what, and 
what kind of testimony, it was attempted to be substanti- 
ated, and what, if any, defence was made, we can only 
know from the unskilled persons, having themselves 
apparently no knowledge of the classification of crimes, 
of the nature of sufficient testimony or of the methods of 
judicial proceedings, who have undertaken, years after the 
event, to tell us. As tp the informal proceedings, — that 
is, what was said to Jesus, and what he said, other than 
in the indictment and pleadings, — we can know still less. 
This much is certain : Jesus himself after his arrest had no 
opportunity, during his life, to converse with his disciples 
and to disclose to them the proceedings in reference to 
himself before the Sanhedrim, and none of his disciples 
were present as witnesses. What the public of Jerusalem 
learned about those proceedings they must have learned 
from members of the Council. Doubtless, many members 
of the Council afterward embraced the faith of Jesus, and 
described his language and bearing with all the partiality 
of believers and admirers. Others, the majority, who 
retained their animosity, told the story tinctured with 
their own prejudices. But, between the two classes, a 
substantial agreement as to the main facts ultimately 
obtained, which formed the public opinion of the time. 
From a public opinion thus informed, the disciples col- 
lected their information ; and it was finally committed to 
writing in what are called the Gospels. 

It is doubtless correct as to its substance. What Jesus 
said, if anything, at his trial and during the suffering of 
his public execution, owing to the solemnity of the cir- 
cumstances, and the number and character of the observ- 
ers, would be likely to be better remembered and more 
accurately reported than any of his words. Taking the 
most trustworthy report of his words and of the course 
and issue of his trial, let us try to understand how the pro- 
ceedings against him which terminated in his death were 
conducted. It will be necessary to consider the condition 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 299 

of the civil government, and of the criminal code, to which 
he was subject. 

The political situation of Jerusalem and Palestine was 
somewhat anomalous. The Romans did not until the year 
70 of the Christian era conquer the country, and make it 
a part of the empire. In extending their dominions, they 
had subdued the Greek dynasties of the Seleucidae, and 
Ptolemaias on either side of the Jews ; and the latter, 
who had succumbed to the armies of Alexander, had no 
means of resisting the armies of Pompey. In fact, Rome 
got possession of Palestine as an ally of one of its native 
princes, waging war against his kinsmen for the throne 
of Jerusalem. 

Ever since the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Jews 
had maintained their independence. Their first revolt 
from the Greeks was under Judas Maccabasus, 164 B.C. ; 
and he and his brothers, and their descendants, had not 
only delivered Judea, but had conquered Samaria, Galilee, 
Trachonitis, and part of Idumea from the Syrio-Greek 
kings, and had ruled over this territory as princes. In 
the year B.C. 104, Aristobulus, one of those princes, took 
the title of king. His brother Alexander succeeded him. 
Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, sons of Alexander, strove to- 
gether in arms for the succession, and the latter, being 
defeated, called in the Romans as umpires ; and Pompey, 
the general of the Senate, took Jerusalem and made Hyr- 
canus king. Antigonus, son of Aristobulus, made war on 
Jerusalem in the year 43 B.C., and tried to recover his 
father's throne. Herod, the son of Antipater, who had 
married the grand-daughter of Hyrcanus, attempted to de- 
lend the city, but having been defeated fled to Rome. 
The Senate declared him king, and sent him back with an 
army. Antigonus in his turn was defeated and slain ; 
and Herod became king of Palestine, reigning at Jerusa- 
lem, until about the time of the birth of Jesus. On his 
death, the kingdom was assigned to his sons, Judea to 
Archelaus, Galilee to Herod Antipas, and Trachonitis to 
Philip; but Judea in the sixth year of the Christian era 
was added to the proconsulate of Syria, and governed for 
the Emperor by Pontius Pilate. Afterward, for a brief 
period, Herod Agrippa, grandson of the first Herod, ruled 
for a few years over re-united Palestine ; but after 44 A.D. 
it was ruled by governors as a Roman province 



300 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

As the revolt of Judas Maccabaeus was not only for 
political, but for religious independence, and as it was 
incited chiefly by an attempt by Antiochus to abolish 
the Mosaic religion, it is to be concluded that all the 
Asmonasan kings were devout Jews, and zealous for the 
national worship and the faith of Jehovah. Hyrcanus 
himself was originally the High Priest, and his powerful 
family kept both the Church and the State well in their 
hands. Indeed, the very last king of the line, Herod 
Agrippa, seemed to have well merited the compliment 
bestowed on his orthodoxy by Paul, when, in the presence 
of his heathen compeers, he invoked him as a brother of 
the faith : "King Agrippa, believest thoic the prophets ? I 
knozu that thou believest." 

Coming into possession of the country by policy rather 
than by force, and ruling it for several years only by 
accepting the fealty of its own native princes, the Romans 
would be likely to interfere as little as possible with the 
internal affairs of the people, and to leave the priesthood 
in the complete exercise of all their ecclesiastical func- 
tions. The Jews were not required to abjure their relig- 
ion, to change their forms of worship, or to contribute 
soldiers to the armies of the republic. They felt the loss 
of their independence only in the payment of taxes, rigor- 
ously exacted, and in the presence of Roman garrisons 
in their strongholds. After the court of Archelaus was 
broken up, and Pontius Pilate, a Roman knight, had been 
established in the palace to represent the majesty of 
Caesar, the High Priest was still absolute in all matters ot 
religion, and perhaps the court of the Sanhedrim still 
continued to administer justice in all civil affairs. The 
probability is that ordinary offences against the person, 
against property, as well as crimes of sacrilege and blas- 
phemy, were judged and determined by the Council of 
priests and elders ; while military offences, like rebellion 
and riot, treason and crimes against the Roman sover- 
eignty, were tried before the Procurator as the represen- 
tative of Rome. Historical critics are not agreed as to 
whether the power of executing sentence was allowed to 
the Council of the Sanhedrim, or whether, in cases of cap- 
ital offences, the sentence of punishment required, as it 
does in England and in the United States, the warrant 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 3OI 

of the Chief Executive, who had, besides, the prerogative 
of pardoning. 

So far as the data given in the Acts of the Apostles are 
trustworthy, it would seem, that after the death of Jesus, 
and while Judea was still under the control of Roman gov- 
ernors, the Council of the chief priests and elders was 
allowed, not only to initiate, but to complete capital trials, 
to declare and execute sentence. Thus, Peter and John, 
preaching the resurrection and faith of Jesus, after his 
death, and while Pilate was still Governor, were arrested 
and imprisoned, and brought before the Sanhedrim for 
trial. Peter addressed the tribunal as : " Riders of the 
people and elders of Israel." After listening to the 
defence, the Council retired and consulted. It deter- 
mined indeed to threaten and release the accused preach- 
ers ; and the account says, the Sanhedrim refrained from 
exercising their authority, not for fear of any interference 
by the Roman military government, but for fear of the 
people, who sided with the disciples. 11 The same apostles 
were arrested a second time, committed for trial, and 
were rescued from prison, but recaptured and brought 
before the Council. Again the Council heard the de- 
fence, again it deliberated apart, and then sentenced 
the accused to be beaten. 1 ' 

The proceedings against Stephen, though doubtless 
somewhat irregular, were in their form judicial. Wit- 
nesses appeared ; the charge of blasphemy was made; 
the proofs were offered ; the defence was listened to, and 
a sentence of condemnation was passed. Stephen was 
executed by stoning, the witnesses attending and casting 
the first stone, c as the law required. This was the legal 
method of executing a capital sentence/ and although 
there was manifested in the execution all the hatred and 
vindictiveness, which characterized a mob, it is not lightly 
to be believed, that an upright man, a scholar and a Phar- 
isee, like Paul, would have participated in proceedings, 
that were simply lawless and murderous. Later still, 
after Agrippa had obtained the kingdom, Paul himself 
was arrested in Jerusalem, and was carried by the Chief 
Captain of the Roman garrison before the Jewish Council 

*Actsiv., 1-23. b Acts v., 17-40 cActsvi., 11-15. 

d hev. xxiv., 16. « Acts viii., 1. 



302 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

to be tried. True he sent afterward a band of soldiers 
and recovered his prisoner ; but that was because it had 
become known that he was accused only of some ecclesi- 
astical offence; and that he was a Roman citizen. As 
military commandant, Claudius Lysias took the liberty to 
change the jurisdiction, and to send the case of a man not 
a native of the country, but a Roman citizen of the prov- 
ince of Cilicia, to the judgment of the Roman governor. 
This proceeding indicates, that, but for that interference, 
the authority of the Sanhedrim to proceed to trial, sen- 
tence, and execution, would not have been questioned. 11 
The conclusion must be, therefore, that, in the political 
status of Palestine at the time, it was within the province 
of the Council of the elders and chief priests to try Jesus, 
to pass judgment, and to execute sentence upon him after 
conviction. 

A writer in the Contemporary Review, in two papers 
characterized by intelligence and judicial candor, has 
undertaken to show that Jesus was subjected to two dis- 
tinct trials under two widely different systems of jurispru- 
dence, the Jewish and the Roman, both of them justly 
celebrated for their elaborate and effective methods of 
securing justice, and of preventing popular prejudice or 
the influence of the government from obtaining convic- 
tion in any other than clearly proved cases of guilt. The 
writer undertakes to show that in both of these trials 
the fundamental rules of the law were disregarded, and 
that the delivery of the accused to execution was without 
the requisites of a valid judicial conviction. The special 
points stated to show that the proceedings before the 
Jewish Council were in violation of the national criminal 
code are, that the trial, being a capital one, was com- 
menced in the night, the law requiring all trials in crimi- 
nal and in civil cases to be commenced in the day-time, 
though the latter only might be concluded in the night. 
The law also required the Council in criminal cases, un- 
less their judgment was for the acquittal of the accused, 
to separate and consider their verdict of condemnation 
twenty-four hours, or longer, if a Sabbath or holiday 
intervened, before formally affirming it. It was not law- 
ful for the Council, or any member of it, to procure the 

« Acts xxi., 27-40; xxii., xxiii., xxiv., xxv. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 303 

witnesses, who, under the Jewish system, were also the 
prosecutors. The accusation and testimony of these wit- 
nesses were the only indictment, — the only setting forth 
of the offence that the proceedings required. The wit- 
nesses also took the initiative in inflicting the punish- 
ment. It was an outrage on all Jewish ideas of justice 
for these persons, who assumed the responsibility of the 
prosecution, to be either the magistrates who listened 
to the evidence, or to be suborned or procured by them. 
It is also maintained in the same papers, that, when the 
testimony of the witnesses broke down, as it is declared 
to have done, either because of its inadequacy to show an 
offence, because of the lack of credibility of the persons 
offering it, or on account of its contradictory character, 
Jesus should have been at once acquitted. The subse- 
quent adjuration of Jesus, and the finding by the Council 
that his confession was blasphemous, were in direct viola- 
tion of the letter and spirit of the Hebrew law, which 
permitted no accused person to be interrogated, and pro- 
tected him from self-crimination as effectually as does 
the common law. 

Instead of there being two triais, upon two distinct 
charges, there was, according to the most credible tradi- 
tion, but one. The writer, trying to account for the fact 
that there was a reference to Pontius Pilate, a judgment 
by him from the Pretorium, and a delivery of the prisoner 
to the Roman soldiery, who led him away and consum- 
mated the execution, assumes that there must have been 
a trial, and methods of procedure something like what 
were prescribed by the statutes and customs of the 
Roman republic in criminal cases. But there is nothing 
in the tradition to indicate that any second or Roman 
trial was had. After reference to Pilate there was no 
accusation, no fixing upon a day for trial, no testimony 
offered under oath, no delatio, no argument of counsel, 
no deliberation or balloting of jurors, all of which were 
essential features of a trial conducted after the Roman 
methods. It is true Syria, and Judea, after its annexa- 
tion to Syria, were Imperial, and not Senatorial provinces, 
and were ruled directly by Caesar and by his deputies, 
responsible only to himself ; but in those cases, where 
the emperor intervened directly in the trial of criminals 



3O4 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

at home, or in the provinces through his deputies — the 
proconsuls — the forms of proceeding were substantially 
the same, as when the trials were conducted before the 
quasstors or the special judicial magistracy in Rome. 
The emperor, the proconsul abroad, the quaestors at 
home, presided in the court ; but the responsibility and 
judgment were with the jurors, who gave their votes for 
acquittal or condemnation, just like a modern jury, save 
that a mere majority could convict, whereas from modern 
juries unanimity is required. 

The matter came to the judgment of Pilate because 
he was the recognized chief-executive power, and because 
the soldiers depended upon to accomplish the crucifixion 
were under his orders. It seems probable, as has been 
already shown, that this was not necessary ; that the 
Council of Jews that had condemned Jesus had plenary 
power to cause their sentence to be executed, and that 
they might have ordered against him the same punish- 
ment of lethal stoning, to which a short time afterwards 
they subjected Stephen, with no more interference on the 
part of the Roman governor or garrison, than happened 
in Stephen's case. 

There are two reasons wny probably the Sanhedrim 
did not undertake, in the case of Jesus, to execute their 
own sentence. The first was their great timidity, of 
which the evangelical writers speak not only in their 
account of the proceedings against Peter and John, but 
also in the proceedings against Jesus. They had sup- 
pressed their resentment and postponed summary meas- 
ures, because Jesus had brought with him from Galilee 
the reputation both of a prophet and a wonder-worker, 
and, doubtless too, of an upright, pure, and blameless life. 
The sect of the Pharisees, as Josephus says, never in- 
clined to excessive punishments. 11 They dared not pro- 
ceed against Jesus, until they had gained the support 
and sympathy of the multitude. During those few days 
that intervened between his arrival in Jerusalem and his 
arrest, their emissaries had undoubtedly been busy with 
false and exaggerated accusations against him in all quar- 
ters of the city. After the multitude turned out at mid- 
night to assist in the arrest of Jesus, the chief priests 

"Jos. Antiq. xiii , ex. 6. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 305 

first became sure, that the mob would stand by, and aid 
in putting him to death. But now if, having thrown part 
of the guilt of his plotted death upon the multitude, they 
can throw a part too upon the Roman administration, 
they believe that they can almost acquit themselves of 
blame. So, in a spirit of new and feigned loyalty, they 
carry their convicted prisoner to the deputy of Csesar, 
and ask him to issue the necessary order to have him 
executed. 

The other reason why the chief priests and elders did 
not insist upon a jurisdiction, about which they had gen- 
erally been quite tenacious, was the fear of a military 
interference with their proceedings. Jesus was not a 
native of Jerusalem or of Judea. He was a Nazarene, and 
a subject of King Herod, then reigning, an independent 
ally of the Romans. When afterward the same Jewish 
Council undertook to proceed with the trial and punish- 
ment of Paul, the Captain of the garrison sent a body 
of soldiers to rescue him, and transferred his case by 
sheer military power to the Roman magistrate, on the 
ground, as alleged in his letter, that he was a native of 
Cilicia, a Roman province, and of Tarsus, whose citizens 
had obtained from the Senate the privileges of Roman 
citizenship." Doubtless, in repressing riots and in col- 
lecting taxes, the officers and soldiers, partly through 
ignorance, partly through contempt, had roughly violated 
many of the local and ecclesiastical laws and customs of 
the country, in which they were strangers, and so ren- 
dered themselves amenable to arrest and punishment 
before the local courts. It would ill comport with the 
dignity of conquerors to permit their own functionaries to 
be thus molested by the tribunals of a captured country, 
and rescues of accused persons claiming Roman protec- 
tion must have been already frequent. There were 
strong reasons, therefore, why the Council at Jerusalem 
should not arrogate against the Roman authority a crimi- 
nal jurisdiction, which seemed by no means unquestion- 
able, over the person of Jesus. 

There having been but one really judicial proceeding, 
it becomes necessary, following the footsteps of the 
Review writer, to consider how far it was regular in its 

"Acta xxii., 24-29; xxiii., 25-30. 



306 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

modes of proceeding, and whether its findings were sub- 
stantially consistent with what we now know to have 
been the facts in the case. It might be assumed, a priori^ 
that, under the known circumstances of the case, the 
safeguards of the law would have been violated, and all 
the provisions which favored the accused would have 
been, in spirit, if not in form, overridden. A body of 
men so exasperated that they will, if they dare, arrest a 
person and put him to death in secret, if they afterward, 
to satisfy some of their more tender-hearted or more 
scrupulous associates, decide to give him the benefit of a 
trial, will be likely to make the trial as much as possible 
the instrument of effecting their predetermined malice. 
They will try him, not to see if he be guilty, but the 
more safely to compass his death. In the same spirit, 
in quite recent times, many famous State trials have been 
conducted in England, where the judges and the juries, 
in their judgments and sentences, have given savage 
utterance to the resentment of the court, whose favor 
they sought to win, by lending themselves to accomplish 
its revenge, or to the prejudice and rage of the people, 
from whose violence perhaps the prisoner had been res- 
cued. During the madness of the Reign of Terror, — 
although executions followed the sentence of legalized 
tribunals, and after a summary hearing of testimony, — so 
prevalent was the prejudice, so cruel and ferocious the 
whole populace, and the government it had improvised, 
that history properly characterizes such wholesale punish- 
ment of innocent persons as massacres and murders. 

Undoubtedly, the proceedings against Jesus were open 
to the condemnation, that they were unlawfully initiated 
in the night-time, and that a judgment of conviction was 
rendered early in the morning after the arrest, and a few 
hours before execution, which could not have been law- 
fully rendered earlier than the third day afterward. It has 
been seen that Jesus was arrested in the night, after the 
Passover had been celebrated in the evening — that occa- 
sion probably having been seized upon to find him in the 
environs of the city. According to received tradition, this 
was the day of the week corresponding to our Thursday. 
The day following, the trial and condemnation took place ; 
and, before three o'clock on the same afternoon, the agony 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 307 

of his death was over. It was unlawful for the Council, 
who were his judges, to procure the witnesses to prose- 
cute him ; and, upon the failure of the suborned testimony 
to justify his conviction, he was clearly entitled to an 
acquittal. 

The objection that, under the Hebrew law, the High 
Priest had no right to adjure him to make confession, nor 
the Council afterward to convict him upon a confession 
thus illegally extracted, is not so well taken. a The interro- 
gation of the High Priest was not a part of the judicial 
proceedings. He addressed the prisoner as the public 
prosecutor, the judge, or any casual person might have 
done. He put a question he had no right to ask, the put- 
ting of which was a gross official impropriety, if not an 
illegality. But Jesus was not prejudiced by the question, 
and was neither compelled nor even called upon to an- 
swer it. It would have been the part of ordinary discre- 
tion not to answer. Jesus was by no means destitute of 
such discretion. His conduct in several difficult emer- 
gencies, and the directions he gave his disciples, indicate 
that he was a man of marked sagacity and self-possession, 
was rarely at loss for a wise answer, was keenly alive to 
what was due to his own dignity, and never betrayed 
himself by any inadvertence of speech. As he did answer 
the question of the High Priest, it must be concluded that 
he did so in full view of the peril he was placing himself 
in, and for the purpose of maintaining to the last that 
claim to divine authority, which he knew would offend the 
priesthood. 

The Review writer assumes the proceeding to have been 
the trial of an accused person upon a certain charge, and 
the failure of the court to find legal evidence to substan- 
tiate the charge. Thereupon, the presiding justice adjures 
the prisoner to state whether or not he is guilty. The 
prisoner, in replying, uses words which the court deems to 
be tantamount to a confession of guilt, and it proceeds to 
pass a judgment of conviction. This is not exactly what 
the record imports, but rather, that the accusation break- 
ing down through the infamy, incompetence, or disagree- 
ment of the testimony, the accused repeats the crime in 
open court, and is proceeded against de novo for the new 

"Mall, xxvi., 63-66. 



308 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

offence. It was as if a person were under trial for an 
assault with a dangerous weapon upon an officer. The 
witnesses to the assault are so contradictory, and of such 
bad repute, that the court refuse to consider the charge 
proved. In that stage of the proceedings, the accused, it 
may be with the very manacles, with which his hands are 
a mfined, assaults the officer and dangerously wounds him. 
The original indictment must fail ; there must be a new 
arrest, a new indictment, and a new trial, at which it may 
or may not be improper for the members of the court, 
who were witnesses of the assault, to sit as judges. But 
that the criminal can be tried by some tribunal, and can 
be convicted upon the facts being shown, there can be 
no doubt. Or it was as if the offence charged had been 
an oral libel against a magistrate, and, midway of the trial, 
the accused repeats the libel in open court. Is there any 
doubt that, so far from being treated with impunity, the 
repetition and publicity of the libel, and the contempt it 
implies, will be considered an aggravation ? 

We must try to understand the proceedings. Under 
the Jewish law — and the Roman law was nearly the same 

— there was no indictment, no formal written complaint. 
The declaration of the two witnesses was the indictment. 
The witnesses — doubtless in familiar, informal language 

— made their declaration of what the accused did or said. 
The Council determined what offence was implied in the 
acts or words, and proceeded to try him for that offence. 

In this case, Matthew narrates, that the delatio of the 
witnesses was as follows : " This fellow said, I am able 
to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days." a 
Mark's version of it is this : " We heard him say, I will 
destroy this temple, that is made with hands, and within 
three days I will build another made without hands." b 
Luke, very properly considering, that this charge, what- 
ever it was, broke down, and the sentence was for the 
offence in open court, omits all account of it, and proceeds 
directly to the adjuration and the reply, deemed by the 
court blasphemous. But let us revert a moment to the 
trial as it began. The accusation, as given by Matthew, 
involves only a single offence, a claim to supernatural or 
divine power. As given by Mark, it involves that, and 

a Matt, xxvi., 61. b Mark xi/., 58. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 309 

also sacrilege, inasmuch as it not only asserts ability to 
rebuild the temple miraculously, but the intention to 
destroy it. Both of these offences were high crimes 
under the extant Jewish law. 

Now, we may either believe that the actual statement 
of the witnesses was as Mark records, or that it was as 
Matthew records, — for there is a substantial difference 
between them, — or we may believe that both are correct, 
and that this very discrepancy was the reason why the 
Council determined that the disagreement was fatal, and 
the offence not proved. But for which of the two 
offences, blasphemy or sacrilege, implied in Mark's words, 
was the court actually proceeding ? Clearly for the 
former. Jesus had in fact never uttered any threats 
against the temple ; and it is not probable, that he had 
ever spoken the words put into the "mouth of the false 
witnesses by Matthew. It was not a malicious purpose 
of destroying the temple that the Council for the mo- 
ment entertained, but the presumptuous implication of 
the power to rebuild it in three days. He who could 
do that must be greater than Solomon, greater than Ezra 
or Nehemiah. Only the divine power could build such 
a structure in three days. The author of the Fourth 
Gospel, in the construction of the conversations ascribed 
to Jesus in his lifetime, has skilfully used this charge 
against him, and aptly indicated its significance in the 
minds of his accusers. " Forty-six years," said the Jews, 
"was the temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in 
three days? But he spake of the temple of his body." a 
It is probable,, too, that the author, who evidently be- 
lieves Jesus had used the words alleged in the indict- 
ment, wished to extenuate their apparent impiety by the 
after-suggestion, that they were spoken in a figurative 
sense. In the contradiction between the witnesses at 
the trial, the Galilean evangelists, and the Fourth Gospel, 
it is now impossible to determine what Jesus had said. 
Was it something about coming back in three days, with 
which the synoptic writers have confused the three days 
of Jonah in the whale, and John a destroyed temple to be 
raised in three days ? The real similitude indicated by 
Jesus to Jonah must have been, that as Jonah was a sign 

ajohn ii., 20, ax. 



3IO OPINION'S AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

to the Ninevites, so was he himself to his generation ; • 
and his actual allusion to the temple must have been, that 
not a stone of it should be left upon another. b After the 
disciples began to believe that their Master had come 
back, after three days, from the grave, the swallowing 
and casting-up of the old prophet, and the destroyed 
temple to be restored, were thought to be parallels and 
prophecies of the resurrection. What a fanciful believer 
had appended as a marginal note to his copy of the 
memorabilia of Jesus became adopted as the text of a 
later transcription. What the High Priest said, with 
the evident concurrence of the Council, indicates that 
the inquisition of the court was toward blasphemy,^ and 
not toward sacrilege. " Ye have heard the blasphemy" the 
blasphemy about which we have been questioning the 
witnesses ; what need of further testimony, that is, of 
further like testimony, of testimony pertinent to the 
matter under investigation? 

It only remains to consider, Was the judgment itself 
just? It has already appeared that the proceedings were 
grossly irregular and illegal, both those of the court in 
condemning, and those of the de facto executive power in 
ordering to execution a person, whose sentence he had 
the power, if not the right, to review, and whom after 
examination he found to have done nothing worthy of 
death/ 1 Such violent proceedings could only issue in 
judicial murder, and the verdict of history has been just 
that Jesus was put to death without having been lawfully 
convicted, or regularly tried. But a murderer may be 
unlawfully put to death by a mob, who are so indignant 
at his crime, that they have broken into his prison, and 
taken him thence, and hanged him. It is in the eye of 
the law as much murder as if the victim were an inno- 
cent man. And yet, in the case supposed, the murderer 
would certainly have been convicted, and the mob have 
only anticipated what would have been done ultimately 
by the officers of the law. Did the acts and language 
of Jesus, if they have been handed down to our times 
correctly by the received traditions, constitute what a 
conscientious and enlightened jurist of Jerusalem was 

»Matl xii., 41 ; Luke xi., 29-32. b Matt, xxiv., :, 2 ; Luke xxi., 5, 6. 
cMatt. xxvi., 63, 64. d Luke xxiii., 13-22- 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 3 1 1 

required to consider blasphemy, or any other capital 
offence ? 

The words charged, the substance of which was that he, 
Jesus, had power to rebuild the temple in three days, did 
not seem to have been proved. We can account for the 
tradition of the Fourth Gospel imputing them to him, by 
the notoriety created by the trial, and the unsuccessful 
effort of an apologist to extenuate their criminal signifi- 
cance. For if Jesus meant by this temple this body of 
his, — a meaning no hearer would infer, — it was equally a 
claim to divine power. A temple is a human work, and 
may be made even in three days, with a sufficient force 
of perfectly organized laborers ; but a dead body cannot 
be made alive by any power or skill of the deceased. The 
explanation, if admissible, is an extenuation of the offence 
of sacrilege. It is a confession of the offence for which 
he was actually tried. And if Jesus had not said those 
words, we know now that he had said other words, that 
less equivocally asserted his divine sonship and Deity, 
upon which the charge of blasphemy might have been as 
well based. He had called himself Christ (meaning the 
Messiah)," the Son of God, b Master, King/ King of Zion," 
and the Lord — the usual designation among the Israelites 
of Jehovah, their God. f ' He had declared himself the 
Judge of mankind. 2 He had claimed authority to forgive 
sins, 1 ' and to modify the law of the ten words. 1 He had 
said that he was greater than Solomon, j greater than the 
temple. k He had assured his followers that he would 
soon come in the clouds of heaven in glory, with all the 
holy angels as a retinue. 1 He had asserted that all things 
were delivered to him by God, and no man could know 
God except by him." 1 Within a few hours of his trial, he 
had said, that he had only to ask God, who was his father, 
and he would send twelve legions of angels to rescue him 
from the soldiers, who had arrested him." 

The old Hebrew law still in force in the time 'of Jesus 
was, He that blaspJiemeth the name of the Lord shall surely 
be fiut to death, and all the congregation of Israel shall 

■■ Matt, xxiii., S, 10; Mark ix., 41. c Luke xix., 38, 40. i Matt, v., 21-32 ; xii., 7, S. 

Matt, xvi., 16, 17. f Matt, xii., 8 ; Luke xix., 31. j Matt, xii., 42. 

c Matt, xxiii., 3. g Matt, xxv., 31, 32. k Matt, xii., 6. 

d Matt. xxv. , 34. li Matt, ix., 6. ' I Matt, xxv., 31. 

f" Matt, xi., 27. n Matt, xxvi., 53. 



312 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

certainly stone him* The oneness of God had been the 
great idea, for which the whole cultus of the Jews stood. 
All around them were peoples who believed in families 
and associations of gods, in gods who were the husbands 
of goddesses, and the husbands of mortal women, in gods 
who were the fathers of other gods, and the fathers of 
heroic men. All this was an unspeakable abomination to 
the pure mind of the Jew. His God was neither begotten, 
nor did he beget, but was from everlasting to everlasting 
the same — never growing old, never sharing his power or 
glory with a son or a successor. In their piety and ser- 
vice of Jehovah, the Israelitish orators and poets had used 
the figure of fatherhood to represent the tender love of 
their deity for his chosen people ; they had used the figure 
of husband to represent the peculiar and exclusive attach- 
ment, which that relation implied from the chosen people 
toward their deity, but always strictly as a figure of 
speech. No Jewish mind was ever literal or gross enough 
to connect anything genetic or sexual with the rela- 
tion. All around them among the Greeks, the Romans, 
the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the gods 
were altogether like themselves : they married, they were 
given in marriage, they broke over the exclusiveness of 
the tie with the license allowed to great kings, and they 
begot offspring like unto themselves, who shared their 
power and immortality. One son of God had rebelled 
against his father and conquered from him the sover- 
eignty of the universe. But neither as fact, philosophy, nor 
poetry did the. prophets of Israel receive these ideas, or 
tolerate the least compromise with them, or with any 
symbols or rites, that recognized them. Perhaps they 
believed there were such gods, and that they lived in such 
practices ; but their God, Jehovah, living in utter remote- 
ness from all such compromising relations, in an awful 
austerity of purity and holiness, was not tc be soiled by 
any such imputations. How hard had the lesson of the 
prophets been ! How easy it had been for the rude people 
to forget their sublime faith, and to adopt gods that flat- 
tered their instinctive and family affections ! And what 
years of famine, war, pestilence, and slavery had they 
suffered — as they came to believe — for their apostasies. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 313 

But now at last they have grown up to the sublime idea 
of their own religion ; and, after the revolt of Maccabaeus, 
the nation may have been licentious, cruel, intolerant, and 
turbulent, but it was no longer and never will be idola- 
trous or capable of being turned from the great lesson of 
its discipline, burned into its experience and heart, — 
" Hear, O Israel ! the Lord our God is one Lord." a 

Still, plain as was the prohibition of the law, strong as 
was the national sentiment that sanctioned and enforced 
it, and palpable as was the claim of Jesus to a genetic 
relationship and substantial equality with God to be con- 
sidered in the eyes of an intelligent Jew of his time a 
breach of the letter and spirit of the law, it seems to be 
fairly implied from all that we know, that Jesus would not 
have been molested, notwithstanding his divine preten- 
sions, had he remained in Galilee, or, coming to Jerusa- 
lem, had he refrained from denouncing the ecclesiastical 
authorities, and from violently interfering with the temple 
service. He would have been safe in Galilee, which was 
ruled over by Herod, nominally himself a Jew, but who 
could never have been induced to molest a prophet that 
abstained from denouncing his own licentiousness. The 
hesitation of the Pharisees and elders, and their reluc- 
tance to assume the guilt of his taking off, show that they, 
too, would have overlooked the legal offence, but for envy 
and malice, and the pretext it gave them to revenge them-* 
selves on an enemy. 

There is still a law against blasphemy in England and 
in the United States, less severe in its penalty, but taking 
cognizance of the same offence set forth in the Mosaic 
code. There has been in this country and in England 
much reverent and sincere, but bold and free, criticism on 
matters of religious belief, which would seem to fall liter- 
ally within the purview of this statute. An enlightened 
public sentiment prevents the law — still wholesome and 
salutary to punish ribald and profane libels upon the sincere 
faith of the great mass of mankind — from being used to 
punish honest and earnest inquiry, and the free expres- 
sion of religious convictions, that differ from the popular 
standard. Should a prosecution to enforce the statute 
against blasphemy be undertaken in this country, it would 



314 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

be most desirable, that it should fall under the oversight 
of a wise judge, who would know how to discriminate 
between the conscientious inquirer, who had given expres- 
sion to a reverent belief, and the flippant scoffer, who had 
degraded a high ideal. Even as early as the first century 
there was a liberal spirit, then due to the influence of 
Greek philosophy and learning, and to the general scepti- 
cism, that was beginning to make the whole scheme of 
the pagan mythology slightly ridiculous, which modified 
the rigor of positive law, and prevented it from being put 
in execution, except in cases like that of Jesus, where 
the ostensible charge was a mere pretext to cover a con- 
cealed envy. 

We are carefully considering the question from the 
stand-point, not of the modern reverence for the name of 
Jesus, but from the stand-point of Jewish law, as it stood 
when Jesus came from his native Galilee to Jerusalem. 
There is one consideration not to be overlooked. If 
Jesus was the Son of God he claimed to be, how is the 
justice of the judgment of condemnation pronounced 
against him affected by the relation ? The le.°;al mind is 
by no means unfamiliar with the privileges, which in 
many instances modify and change the relation of persons 
toward the laws. It was a maxim of the Roman State, 
that the emperor was raised above all liability to the pen- 
alties of the law. The English common law has always 
maintained the principle, that the king can do no wrong. 
The privilege of clergy, and of the peerage has been, and 
to some extent still is, a bar to ordinary criminal proceed- 
ings, and removes an accusation to some special tribunal 
jurisdiction. So military authority, during the exigency 
of a state of siege, takes away from the police and from 
courts all inquisition of the violent and arbitrary acts of 
commanders. But all cases of exemption from jurisdic- 
tion, on account of the rank, dignity, or authority of the 
person, must be apparent as a public fact, or must be not 
only pleaded, but proved. It would be impious to pre- 
tend, that the Deity, even if he should veil himself in 
human form, or any divine being sharing his attributes, 
could ever be the subject of human criminal law; and, if 
Jesus obviously belonged to this grade of being, his cru- 
cifixion was the most daring and blasphemous act that 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 315 

ever oppressed the conscience of man. It would, how- 
ever, ill comport with our ideas of justice to punish or 
even to execrate a human tribunal that had ordered the 
death of a divine being, who had effectually disguised his 
deity in the form of a man, and had in that character com- 
mitted an act, which would have been criminal in a man. 
But were the Sanhedrim, according to the character in 
which the person of Jesus became known to them, justi- 
fied in regarding him as a man ? Could they indeed prop- 
erly entertain any other opinion of him ? Whatever 
demonstrations of superhuman power Jesus may have 
made in Galilee, he had come to Jerusalem making only 
such manifestations as a prophet and preacher might 
make. He had declined, when importuned, to give any 
sign to authenticate even that character and office. He 
had allowed himself to be proclaimed in the street as the 
King of Zion, and in the temple he had forcibly reproved 
an old custom on the authority that the temple was the 
house of his Father. But it was these very acts and dec- 
larations, that had seemed to the Jews blasphemies, and 
had led to his arrest and trial. But, as Jesus had come to 
Jerusalem to die, he had refused to put forth any powers, 
which might overawe his enemies, and prevent them from 
consummating their malicious purposes. 11 He had in his 
agony prayed to God, whose high purposes he believed 
himself to be accomplishing, to spare him, if possible, the 
bitterness of death. 1 ' He had in his mind vague hopes of 
a rescue by legions of angels at the very last moment ; 
but now he will not show any of those gifts of healing 
or eloquence, by which he had won converts in Galilee, 
to soften the hearts of the soldiers, and turn to his cause 
tiic favor of his judges. He will confront his accusers 
and receive and endure his sentence simply as a man. 
He will not even allow his followers to defend him, 
though this he at one time appears to have meditated. 
This mob, he declared, these rulers, this Roman gov- 
ernor with his soldiers, are all ministers of Jehovah ; 
and they must work out, through my submission and 
death, those divine purposes, which lead to my glory and 
the salvation of my elect.' 1 Having doubtless in his mind 
the prophetic emblem of the lamb dumb before his 

■ Matt, xxvi., 53, I'Mntt. xxvi., .12. c Luke xi., 29. '1 Matt, xxvi., 54. 



3l6 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

shearers, he clearly intended to maintain entire silence, 
and let his foes work their will. Before the Council of 
the chief priests and elders, he is silent." The pre- 
varication of the witnesses, who try to tell something he 
had said, does not disturb him. The purely personal 
sense of his language — the temple he would raise being 
his own slain body, as explained by John — was open to 
his explanation ; but he does not avail himself of it, — 
partly, because it will not take from the language the 
implication of blasphemy, but partly, because he will 
not say anything, that might constitute a defence or 
soften the hearts of his persecutors. 1 ' The Chief Priest 
is astonished and indignant at his silence, and at length 
adjures him, by the living God, to say whether he is or 
is not the Christ, the Son of God. Now, Jesus will 
speak ; because his speech will not lead to his deliver- 
ance, but will, as it did, insure his condemnation ; and 
because he has an opportunity to repeat the lofty claim, 
upon which he has dared to stake his life. c We are 
thus left to the conclusion, that whatever dignity or 
privilege may have elevated such a person as Jesus from 
capability of committing the crime, for which he was con- 
demned, he studiously avoided showing that dignity and 
privilege, in any way that would be likely to affect his 
judges favorably toward himself, or take his acts and 
words out of the category of human conduct, for which he 
wished to remain absolutely responsible, in the character 
of a man and a subject of the State. Inasmuch as the 
judgment of the Council — in which there were probably 
some men of candor and impartiality — was unanimous 
for his conviction, it must be concluded that there were 
no misgivings, even on the part of any of them, that Jesus 
was other than a Galilean Jew, born into, and living 
under allegiance to the Mosaic law, and to the ecclesias- 
tical authority of the chief priests and elders, d to be judged 
for his conduct in those relations precisely like an ordi- 
nary person. 

In examining the different accounts of the trial of 
Jesus, new confirmation is found for the opinion ex- 
pressed in these pages of the fictitious character of the 

"Matt, xxvi., 63; xxvii., 14. b Matt, xxvi., 59-63. 

\xvi., 64. '1 Mark jciv., 64. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 317 

Fourth Gospel. Matthew, Mark, and Luke — these 
names are only used to distinguish from each other the 
unknown writers of the narratives bearing their names — 
all assert that the occasion of Jesus being in Jeru- 
salem the night he was arrested was to eat the Pass- 
over with his twelve chosen disciples. The Passover 
itself was a nocturnal feast. a In the company of the 
believers, the occasion was prolonged by much conversa- 
tion, by the institution, after the regular feast, of a memo- 
rial service, and by many counsels and prophecies which 
the presentiment of death forced upon the mind of 
the Master. According to each of these writers, there 
occurred at this time the prediction of Peter's treachery ; 
and, according to Luke, it was accompanied by a serious 
warning of Peter's imminent spiritual danger, and of an 
assurance of intercessory prayers for his deliverance ; 
also by the rebuke which Jesus gave to his friends about 
striving for precedence and the promulgation of the law 
of his kingdom, that he was greatest in it who served, 
which Matthew and Mark attribute to an earlier occasion ; 
and, finally, by the assignment to the twelve of their 
splendid rank in the new order of things, in which they 
should sit on thrones as princes of the twelve tribes, and 
eat and drink at the table of the great king. 1 ' 

Whichever account is to be taken as correct, it is evi- 
dent that it must have been well into the night after the 
feast of the Passover had been generally celebrated in 
Jerusalem, before Jesus went out of the city to walk in 
the garden of Gethsemane. It is late ; and the chosen 
friends of Jesus, left to their sad thoughts, cannot refrain 
from sleep. Before they had quitted the upper room in 
the city, Jesus had said to Peter, " This night thou shalt 
deny me" ; and again — indicating that it is still night, 
and before dawn — " Before the cock crows, thou shalt 
deny me." The writers of the Synoptics all assert that 
Judas' overtures to the chief priests to betray Jesus 
were made before the Passover feast, and leave it to be 
inferred that they were made some interval before, 
-luring which he sought opportunity to betray him. c 

Turning now to the account of how Jesus was delivered 

"Lev. xxtii. , 5. '>Matt. xxvi., 26-35; Mark xiv., 18-31; Luke xxii., 14-38. 
e Matt, xxvi., 14-16; Mark xiv., 10, 11; Luke xxii., 3-6. 



318 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

into the hands of his enemies, given in the Fourth Gospel, 
the only indication of time we find is that it was before the 
feast of the Passover. Without indicating anything that 
took place before the Passover, except the declaration so 
characteristic of the writer's mind, " Jesus, having loved 
his own, loved them to the end," the narrative goes on to 
say : "Supper being ended, the devil having now put into the 
heart of Judas Iseariot . . . to betray him," and other incon- 
sequential considerations being named, "He riseth from 
supper!' !l According to all other writers, this must have 
been the Passover supper itself, an evening feast ; but 
John does not say so. Indeed, so far as he could indicate 
a time, it is before the feast of the Passover. He says 
that when Jesus, at the supper, told Judas : That thou 
doest, do quickly, some of them thought he meant, Buy 
those things we have need of against the feast. b Later 
on, he says that at twelve o'clock on the day that Jesus 
was crucified, Friday, it was the preparation of the Pass- 
over, which would then have occurred either the night 
of the crucifixion, or the next night, the Sabbath. And 
again, after the institution of the communion service, 
after the admonition to Peter, after all the events that 
Luke dates as occurring the same evening, and after the 
formal discourse of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth 
chapters, which no other writers have mentioned, after the 
scenes in Gethsemane that all other writers describe, 
after the trial before the High Priest which Matthew and 
Mark say began at night and was continued by adjourn- 
ment to the following morning, we come to the bringing 
of Jesus after his condemnation to the judgment hall of 
Pilate for sentence. "They," John says, which must 
mean the priests and elders, cannot go into the judgment 
hall lest they be defiled, and so be unfit to eat the Pass- 
over.' 1 But the Passover was eaten the evening before. 
If it is said the Passover lasted from the evening of the 
14th to the evening of the 15th of the month Abib, there 
is good law for the statement. The whole period from 
the 10th to the 14th, or perhaps for seven days, was 
sacred, and only unleavened bread could then be eaten ; 
but the Passover itself must be eaten at even on the 
14th. " /;/ the fourteenth day of this month at even, ye shall 

& John xiii., 1-3. b John xiii., 27-29. cjohnxix, 14. A John xviii.. 28. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 319 

keep it in his appointed season." a And yet John declares 
that Satan entered into the heart of Judas with the sop 
that Jesus gave him at the supper? John does not say 
that all these proceedings were in the night, only we 
may infer that they were, inasmuch as the captors of Jesus 
are said to have borne torches and lanterns, and the 
cock crows while Jesus is before the High Priest. d 

According to John there was no trial before the Coun- 
cil, no examination of witnesses^ no accusation of sacri- 
lege or of blasphemy, no deliberation of judges, no judg- 
ment of conviction, and no sentence. Jesus is arrested by 
a band of men and officers from the chief priests and 
Pharisees ; he is bound and led away, first to Annas, then 
to Caiaphas, his son-in-law, the High Priest. 6 Apparently, 
it is to the houses or palaces of these clerical dignitaries, 
one after the other, that he is led. The elders and chief 
priests are not assembled, and no formal proceedings 
whatever are bad. It is not the case of a writer omitting 
what previous writers have minutely told. It is a writer, 
who ignores the statement of other writers, who brings 
the narrative to the same point with them, and then gives 
an entirely different account. For, instead of proceeding 
to try him, or to institute any legal proceedings against 
him, Caiaphas accosts him just as if the visit had been 
one of ceremony or courtesy : he asks him concerning his 
disciples, and his doctrine. 1 The captured prophet is 
brought to Caiaphas, not to be tried by the Sanhedrim 
under Jewish law, but that the High Priest might go 
with his captors as accuser and prosecutor to lay the 
case before the judgment-seat of the Roman procurator. 5 
" Thine own nation" Pilate is made to say later, " and the 
chief priest have delivered thee tmto me." h So here is an 
account of the trial of Jesus as different from that of the 
Synoptic Gospels, as is the whole accompanying story of 
the life, the character, and the teachings of the man. 

Here, as elsewhere, the dogmatic and didactic purpose 
of the author reveals itself. He will tell nothing that 
comports not with his idea of the dignity of his hero. 
He will tell only that part of his arrest, his trial, his cru- 
cifixion, which accords with his divine ideal. But the 

uLev. xxiii., 5-8. •> John xiii., 27. c John xviii., 3. <1 John xviii., 27. 
« John xviii., 12, 13, 24, 28. f John xviii., iy. Ejohll xviii., 18. h John xviii., 35. 



320 OPINION'S AXD CHARACTER OF JESUS 

invention of man is less simple, less dignified, less 
worthy the historic fame of Jesus, than the truth as 
told by the less ambitious contemporaries or predeces- 
sors of the writer. Perhaps the writer of the Fourth 
Gospel did not wish to acknowledge that he, who was 
before Abraham," demeaned himself, like one of the chil- 
dren of Israel, to celebrate the Passover, which could only 
be kept at Jerusalem. He had carried him often to the 
temple, but never as a .worshipper, always as a teacher 
of a higher cultus, than that celebrated in the temple; 
and had made him say the hour had come, when true 
worshippers no longer worshipped in the high places or 
in the temples." He gives an account of the arrest, but 
he cannot tell it with the simplicity of the earlier dis- 
ciples. He must have Jesus overawe by the glory of 
his presence the very ruffians that captured him. As 
soon as he said, "I am Jesus of Nazareth; 1 they stag- 
gered backward, and fell to the ground. When Peter 
valiantly drew his sword, so prostrate are his foes, that 
their overthrow would have been easy. But Jesus ^ can 
only be bound by his own sufferance. " The cup," he 
says, "which my Father hath given me, shall I not 
drink it?" d 

The writer is always injecting, to the great derange- 
ment of the sequence of his narrative, some explanation 
of his own to prevent Jesus from being compromised. 
When Jesus asks the posse who come to arrest him, 
" Whom seek you?" the writer cannot bear to have his 
reader think that Jesus did not know, and he explains 
thus • " Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that should come 
upon him, went forth," etc. He asks the question only 
to reply, "If ye seek me, let these go their way."* When 
the High Priest asks Jesus of his disciples and of his 
doctrine, he is made to say : " Why askest thou me? Ask 
them which heard me, what I have said unto them : behold, 
they know what I have said." 1 The answer was consid- 
ered disrespectful by the bailiff, who replies to it by a 
brutal blow. 8 Such an answer would hardly be consid- 
ered pertinent or decorous by any modern tribunal. It 
was quite unlikely that Jesus would have trusted any 

a John viii. , 58. <> John iv., 20-24- c John xviii., 4-6. d JohnxviiL, n. 
ejohn xviii., 7. 8. f John xviii., 21. S John xviii., 22. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 32 1 

casual hearer among those, who had heard him in the 
temple, to explain to the official head of the old national 
faith the sublime mysteries of his doctrine Happily, 
although this record has stood as authentic for eighteen 
centuries, there have been noble spirits tried for their 
lives in both the ecclesiastical and political courts, who 
have left to the world a better example than this of 
patience, self-possession, and dignity. Better the noble 
silence of Matthew and Mark, than to open the mouth 
only to give expression to irritability and impatience. 

Following along the Johannic fiction, we encounter 
only accumulating improbabilities. Jesus is carried to 
the judgment hall, but his accusers do not go in, for fear 
of being defiled ; and Pilate so far accommodates himself 
to their scruples as to come outside to learn what the 
charge is against the prisoner. 11 There was no other trial, 
according to the teller of the story ; and yet we recognize 
neither the formalities of a Jewish, a Roman, or even of a 
mere military court. It is the record of a trial conducted 
under great difficulties, — the accused inside, in the hall 
of judgment, the prosecutors and witnesses, if there were 
any, outside, and neither confronted with the other. We 
find in the mind of the writer no apparent familiarity with 
judicial proceedings of any kind ; but what we do find is 
the incessant dialogue of the whole book perpetuated 
through the trial, and to the end of the life of Jesus, — 
the dialogue couched in the aphoristic, antithetic, repeti- 
tious, never-to-be-mistaken style of the first Johannic 
Epistle — a style made up mainly of a series of verbal 
catches and captious retorts upon the phrases used in 
the interrogations. Thus, when Pilate asks very properly 
and formally, "What is this man accused of '?" the chief 
priests reply captiously and offensively, " If he were not 
a malefactor, we woiild not have brought him at all." 
"Well, then," says Pilate, irritated by the flippancy of 
the answer, "take your malefactor and judge him accord- 
ing to your law." 1 ' Everybody seems to be waiting for 
everybody else to make some slip in his speech, and then 
to pounce on him with a sarcastic reply. In this temper, 
of course nothing can be done ; and the petulant Jews 
have at last to tell whether the man is accused of robbery 

a John xviii., 28, 29. bjohn xviii., 30-32. 



322 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

or theft, of a political or an ecclesiastical offence, before 
any progress can be made. But the immediate reply of 
the Jews is that it is not lawful for them to put any man 
to death, though we find in the sequel that this, too, is 
captious and untrue. They could never have truthfully 
so said. All the other evangelists say they had already 
condemned Jesus to death for blasphemy ; and the Jewish 
law, then in full force, was that the blasphemer should 
surely be put to death. The same writer, earlier in his 
narrative, had declared that the law against adultery 
required the guilty parties to be put to death ; ' and in 
a following chapter he makes the same Jewish priests 
tell Pilate, " We have a law, and by our law he ought to 
die, because he made himself the Son of God." b The con- 
tradiction is explained by imputing a divine direction to 
the language of the priests who thus brought about the 
fulfilment of Jesus' prediction, that his death would be 
by crucifixion. They are made to say : It is not lawful 
for us to put this man to death — certainly not during 
these sacred festivals — but we are guiltless if he be 
affixed to a cross, and his death ensue — as if any judge 
could entertain the idea that a man dying lingeringly in 
crucifixion was less slain by human hands than if he were 
strangled, beheaded, or stoned. 

When Pilate returns to the judgment hall, not having 
elicited from the persons, who had arrested Jesus and 
stood outside as his prosecutors, any information of what 
the accusation was, the same cross-purposes, that had 
irritated the disputants and prevented the trial from 
having any progress begin again between Pilate and the 
accused. Pilate asks Jesus, " Art thou king of the 
yews?" and he replies captiously, " Did you say that of 
yourself, or did others tell it of me ? " d Pilate loses his 
self-possession at the impertinence, and flings back : "Am 
T a yew? Thine own nation and the chief priests deliv- 
ered thee unto me: what hast thou done?"* The prose- 
cutor will not accuse him, will not even present himself 
in court ; so the judge asks the criminal what offence he 
has committed. Jesus is made to reply, "My kingdom is 
not of this world, if it were: my servants would fight, that I 

a Jolin viii., 5. t> John xix., 7. c John xviii., 32 ; iii., 14; xi.,51; xii. , 32, 33. 

J John xviii., 34. c John xviii., 35. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 323 

should not be delivered to the yews."* Every declaration 
of this writer is so tautological that its substance can be 
rendered by copious omissions. To this, Pilate : So you 
are a king, then f The question is at last answered by 
indirection. Jesus replies, " Yes, for that end was I born, 
that I might witness the truth, and every one who is of the 
truth heareikme."* " What is truth?" said Pilate ; and, 
getting no answer, he went outside to the prosecutors and 
said, I have tried the man you have delivered to me, and 
find no fault in him. c Tried him for what ? For no ordi- 
nary civil offence ; certainly not for sacrilege or blas- 
phemy. The governor had asked him if he were king of 
the Jews. Jesus had at last admitted that he was, but ex- 
plained that his kingdom was not of this world, — that he 
was a king only in that he had come into the world to 
reveal the truth ; and, very justly, Pilate had determined 
that there was nothing blamable in such a pretension. 
How then, according to this writer, did Jesus suffer death ? 
The curious story tells itself in the following chapter. 
Pilate, instead of discharging a person whom he had 
acquitted, after his only trial, forgetting, first, that he 
had power to crucify or release him, d asks his accusers to 
consent to his release ; then orders him to be scourged, — 
this acquitted man — then tells the Jews to take him and 
crucify him, for I find him innocent ; then delivers him to 
his own soldiers to be crucified, upon an outcry of the Jews, 
that, if he released him, he would not be a friend of Caesar. 6 
It is easy to see that, if we had no other record of the 
trial and condemnation of Jesus than is given in this 
Gospel, it would be hard to understand how it came to 
pass. 

The whole Johannic story treats the ecclesiastical hie- 
rarchy at Jerusalem with much more leniency than do the 
Synoptic Gospels. Sharp colloquies are held with the 
Rabbis in the temple, and Jesus once, in the irritation 
of his spirit, pronounces them children of the devil/ 
But, generally, they are deferred to, reasoned with, and 
pressing overtures are repeatedly made to them to admit 
the claims of Jesus to the place he claimed in the Jeho- 
vistic dispensation. But the harsh speech of John the 

o John xviii., 36. b John xviii., 37. c John xviii., 38. <1 John xix., 10. 
• •Johnxix., 12, 15, 16. f John viii., 44. 



324 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Baptist is omitted, as well as the censure against them in 
the Sermon on the Mount. They are not shut out of the 
kingdom of heaven as proscriptively as in the several 
parables and plain declarations of Jesus. The terrible 
invective of the twenty-third of Matthew is suppressed ; 
and, when it comes to the crucifixion, they are not the 
judges and executioners of Jesus, but are made to cast 
the responsibility of his death upon the Roman governor, 
who crucifies him as a plotter against Caesar, rather than 
as a person claiming a divine origin and destiny. 

It ought here to be remarked that Matthew's narrative, 
which is strictly confirmed by Mark, again vindicates its 
character, as the most probable tradition of Jesus, by its 
insisting on the silent acquiescence of the accused in all 
the proceedings that culminated in his crucifixion. He 
apprehends the result beforehand. Toward the mob, 
toward the rulers and chief priests, toward Pilate and the 
soldiery, he makes no demonstration, and allows no 
defence." He insists that their acts are providential and 
a part of the divine purpose. He will try only the effect 
of prayer, to modify, if possible, that divine purpose ; but, 
if God will not defend him, he will neither allow himself to 
be defended nor rescued. 1 * Accordingly, he is more per- 
sistently silent before Pilate, than he was before the San- 
hedrim. " He answered him never a word, insomuch that 
the governor marvelled greatly."* But both Matthew and 
Mark mean to say that Jesus said one word to Pilate, 
when he asked him if he was king of the Jews. d As he 
had put his great pretension in the very form, in which 
it was most offensive to the chief priests, when he admit- 
ted to them he was the Christ, the Son of God, c so now 
he will admit, in the most offensive form in which it can 
appear to a Roman governor, that he is the king of the 
Jews. To be a son of God was to the High Priest blas- 
phemy, to be king of the Jews was treason to Caesar ; and 
he will give such answer to each, as will insure his 
destruction. 

After this exhibition — so entirely consistent with both 
the character and plan of Jesus — it is impossible for us to 
give credence to the contradictory statement of Luke, who 

a Matt xxvi., 62, 63. b Matt, xxvi., 51-54. c Matt, xxvii., 14. 
'1 Matt, xxvii.. 11 ; Mark xv., 2. e Mark xiv,, 61. 62. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 325 

says that, when Jesus was adjured by the High Priest, he 
made the compromising and undignified reply, " If I tell 
you, you will not believe ; and if I also ask you, you will 
not answer me, nor let me go." a If he asked what, what 
could Jesus ask the High Priest relevant to his case ? 
Self-delivered, as he declares himself to have been, by his 
own voluntary act, to accomplish a stupendous destiny for 
himself and for the world, how could he have demeaned 
himself by the pusillanimous consideration of being let 
go ? But Luke, too, makes him nobly silent before 
Pilate. 15 It is only in the Johannic drama that the whole 
statement of these three writers is utterly falsified, and 
the noble dignity of Jesus compromised. On the occa- 
sion of the arrest, that peculiar chaffing, so prominent -a 
blemish in the whole book — introduced so many times 
in the story of the curing of the blind man, in colloquies 
with the Jews, in the speech of Jesus with his followers, 
and perpetuated even after the resurrection — reappears. 
But brought before Pilate, Jesus, instead of the marvel- 
lous silence, to which all his real biographers bear testi- 
mony, is made, by the writer of this masterly, but most 
presumptuous fiction, to offend his friendly intercessor, as 
he does the taste of the modern reader, by the captious- 
ness and verbose inconsequence of his replies. 

Strange to say, the writer of the articles referred to in 
the Contemporary Review evidently considers the Johan- 
nic the authentic report of the trial of Jesus, and has 
discovered a hidden meaning in those petulant remarks, 
which were said to have been considered by the officer 
a contempt of the High Priest. He cannot, however, 
understand how — the principal trial being under Roman 
forms — Jesus should have confessed that he was the 
king of the Jews, and yet have been acquitted by Pilate 
of any fault. He concludes that it was because Jesus 
had satisfied Pilate, that his kingdom was not of this 
world. If he had satisfied Pilate, that to be a king of 
the Jews was no invasion of the authority of Caesar, be- 
cause it was a heavenly and not an earthly kingdom that 
was claimed, then Pilate must have seriously entertained 
the idea that Jesus was a heavenly king. If it was an 
insane vagary, a sensible governor would have been as 

" Luke xxii., 67, 68. u Luke xxiii , 9. 



320 OPINION'S AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

liuie disturbed by a peasant's claiming the political sov- 
ereignty of his own proconsulate, as he would by a claim 
to the kingship of the Jews in heaven : either pretension 
would only have amused him. The reviewer succumbs 
to the evident purpose of the writer of Johannic fiction 
to represent Jesus only in an imposing character, without 
seeing that in so doing he has destroyed the probability 
of the events he narrates, and compromised the character 
of the hero. For how, if Pilate had been really affected 
by the claim of Jesus to be a king of a heavenly king- 
dom, and had judicially acquitted him of treason on that 
ground, could he, while still finding him blameless, take 
Jesus and scourge him, and have him mocked by his sol- 
diers, and finally have this sentence — the most remark- 
able in the annals of Roman jurisprudence — passed as 
the judgment of the court, "Take ye him, and crucify him, 
for I find no fault in him" ? a 

The fact is, the writer is misled, as is the ordinary lay 
and clerical mind, by coming to the study of this great 
trial with prepossessions, not easily overborne, of the 
exalted character of the person convicted. It is difficult 
to measure the utter isolation and contempt in which 
Jesus stood before the public of Jerusalem. Only the 
scribes and Pharisees are angry enough to be in earnest 
in their malice ; but they reveal their utter disrespect for 
their victim, by the summary and hasty manner in which 
they proceed to his trial. He is a Galilean fanatic, in 
whose favor no one asks for deliberation or delay, or even 
a seeming compliance with the forms of law. His follow- 
ers have all forsaken him at the first sound of personal 
danger ; and his most trusted servant, lately so demon- 
strative in his devotion under the hope of being his vice- 
roy and prime minister, has denied with oaths that he ever 
knew him. 

The High Priest does not deign to make any reply to 
his assurance that he will come in the clouds of heaven, 
on the right hand of power, but turns to the Council 
to learn if they are not now satisfied that the blasphemy 
is sufficiently proved. 1 ' The condemnation is immediate 
and, as Mark reports, unanimous. There was no Gama- 
liel or Nicodemus, or Joseph of Arimathea, or other candid 

ixix.,6, '■ Matt, xxvi., 65. c Mark xiv., 64. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 327 

person, to interpose any plea in mitigation or postpone- 
ment of the sentence of death. It was not the custom of 
Jewish courts to insult the capitally condemned. In all 
human minds and in all ages, the doom of impending 
death has invested the person of the criminal with a sort 
of dignity and awe that has gained for him pity rather 
than insult. How extreme must have been the contempt 
of Jesus in the minds of these rulers of Israel and digni- 
taries of the Church, so that even the sanctity of impend- 
ing death did not restrain them from leaving their seats 
to spit upon the face of the silently suffering man, and 
from brutally buffeting him with their hands, after cover- 
ing his face, while they derided his prophetic character 
by challenging him to tell who had smitten him. a 

When the chief priests and elders brought Jesus to 
Pilate, it was, as has before been shown, with the evident 
purpose of causing him to take the initiative in the execu- 
tion of the sentence they themselves* had passed, or at 
least to confirm it by an executive warrant. They knew 
that no considerations of blasphemy, no questions of mere 
ecclesiastical law would influence a Roman magistrate. 
So they falsely represented Jesus as claiming to be king 
of the Jews, and as forbidding to pay tribute to Caesar. 1 ' 
It is possible that Pilate may never have heard of the 
Galilean prophet, and of the kingdom of heaven that he 
had preached. It may have been that some rumor of him 
had even reached the ears of the governor. The chief 
priests and elders, who utterly contemned the pretensions 
of Jesus to be the Messiah, could not honestly excite an 
apprehension in the mind of Caesar, which they themselves 
believed to be groundless — though, if Jesus was the king 
of such a kingdom of heaven, as he had preached, his 
purpose threatened the supremacy of Caesar, and the sta- 
bility of every human state and kingdom. But, whether 
Pilate had ever heard of Jesus and his scheme of a king- 
dom of heaven or not, it took only a brief colloquy with 
him to convince Pilate that he need have no serious 
apprehension for the authority of Caesar, and no resent 
ment toward Jesus. "Are you the king of the Jews?" 
he asks. Jesus answers in all simplicity and seriousness 
that he is ; c and Pilate instantly concludes that he is 

" Mark xiv., 65. •» Luke xxiii., 2. c Luke xxiii., 3. 



328 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

dealing with a harmless monomaniac. It ill accords with 
his humane notions to put such a man to death. And 
yet, with his pity, there is a contemptuous estimation of 
a mind clouded, as it seemed to him, with such a fatal 
hallucination ; and, after feeble attempts to get him re- 
leased altogether as a harmless enthusiast, or to get him 
adopted as the one forgiven criminal that an old custom 
surrendered to the populace, he weakly passes the order 
for his execution, lest — in the minds of the envious 
Jews — he might seem to be wanting in loyalty to Caesar. 
Still, when he proposed that he should be chastised before 
his release, he showed that, in all this vacillation, Jesus 
himself had made no favorable impression upon his mind. 
And the fact that he sent him to the cross — an igno- 
minious mode of punishment reserved among the Romans 
for slaves and the disreputable — proved that there was 
no deference to his rank as an artisan or free subject, 
and still less to the sanctity, which he should have 
obtained in the office of a prophet and healer of the 
sick. 

Neither do the soldiers nor their officers, upon whom 
the next cruel office fell, indicate anything but contempt 
for their victim. They cannot proceed in an orderly way 
even to put him to death. They, too, are amused with the 
idea of a Galilean peasant persisting that he is king. A 
king, forsooth ! they said. Let him have a robe of scarlet ! 
and one was found for him ; and a sceptre — a reed was 
placed in his right hand — and, for a crown, thorns are 
plaited and placed about his temples. Then, they bowed 
the knee in mock homage, and hailed him as King of the 
Jews. They, too, spat in his face, and smote him upon 
the head with his own reed sceptre. a An inscription is 
prepared — John attributes this malice to Pilate — ex- 
pressing at once the official derision and the general 
levity and mockery which scandalized all the pro- 
ceedings. 1 * 

Nor does the spectacle of his suffering touch the hard 
hearts of his murderers. The very passers-by make gri- 
maces, and shaking their heads at him, ask why one 
that could destroy and build the temple could not save 
himself. "Come down from the cross," they cried, " Son 

■Matt, xxvii. , 27-31. ''Matt, xxvii., 37; John xix., 19. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 329 

of God : save, if thou canst, thyself ! " a The chief priests 
and elders could not forego the malicious satisfaction of 
looking upon his helplessness ; and they join in the horri- 
ble ribaldry. " If he be the King of Israel," they sneer, 
"let him now come down from the cross, and we will 
believe him. He trusted in God : let him deliver him 
now." b The very thieves so far forgot their tortures, 
that they are swept away in the general ridicule, and 
cast the same words in his teeth. c It is certain the 
whole scene of the trial and the execution of Jesus, as 
described with every indication of probability and in com- 
plete historic harmony with itself, is not of a person of any 
supernatural or unusual endowments, or majesty of bear- 
ing, but of a person so ill-reputed that his judges lose 
their decorum and dignity in trying him, the witnesses 
and the officers of the court insult him with impunity, the 
Roman governor, who sees at a glance the incompatibility 
of what he deems a monstrous hallucination, with any 
dangerous or criminal purpose, amuses himself and amuses 
the multitude with his kingly pretensions ; while the 
soldiers, the mob, the on-looking priests and elder's the 
very wretches, companions of his torture, mingle mirth 
and derision with a spectacle of fiendish cruelty, over 
which the sympathetic heart of humanity has shed more 
tears than over the great aggregate of misery which has 
saddened the history of the world. 

It was over at last. Sensitive to suffering as was Jesus, 
by a nervous organization as fine-fibred and delicate as 
a woman's, the darkness and the peace of death came to 
end his tortures, long before the tough nerves of the two 
coarse fellows, who hung at his side, had succumbed to 
keen and accumulating pains. Pilate marvelled that he 
was so soon dead, d — probably because the victims of that 
terrible mode of capital punishment practised at Rome, 
upon the person only of ignoble criminals, usually held 
out longer. But, if the history is veracious, there were 
other causes of death than the agony of the nails, and the 
deadly torture that comes of quivering nerves and the 
slowly ebbing forces of life. Only Luke tells that there 
followed Jesus to his crucifixion a great company of 
people, and of women who bewailed and lamented him, 

■ Matt, xxvii., 39, 40. b Matt, xxvii., 41-43. c Matt, xxvii., 44. <i Mark XV., 37, 44. 



330 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

and that, in forgetfulness of his fate, he turned to commis- 
erate them ; that he besought God to forgive his tor- 
mentors — for they knew not what they did; that one 
of the thieves, awed by the majesty of his bearing, 
prayed to him in penitence, and was assured of bliss 
that day with him in paradise ; that he confidently com- 
mended his spirit to God at the last ; that the centurion, 
who commanded the executioners, openly acknowledged 
him as a righteous man ; that all his acquaintances and 
the Galilean women looked on from a distance ; and 
that the people that looked on sadly smote their breasts 
in sorrow at his fate." So Luke omits, as he must if 
Jesus met his death in that spirit, the despairing appeal 
to God, and the loud wail with which his spirit took leave 
of his tortured body. But Mark and Matthew report 
that, at the time of his arrest, all his disciples forsook 
him and fled ; and neither of them assert that they 
returned to witness the crucifixion, b or that his acquaint- 
ance, or the women, whose sex might have given them 
impunity, stood even within distant view of his last 
agonies. According to both, the isolation of Jesus was 
complete, the cruel mockery and hatred of all the par- 
ticipants and spectators of his putting-to-death were uni- 
versal ; and, in the desolation of soul which came over 
the enfeebled sufferer at last, he declared, quoting the 
language of one of the hymns of the temple worship, 
that God, whom he had trusted as his father, had for- 
saken him. Why did this sad refrain burst from his 
lips, after he had seen in brave silence all the hideous 
preparations for his cruel and lingering death, and, turn- 
ing to the ribald crowd in vain for one pitying or sym- 
pathetic look, had uttered no word of complaint or 
reproach ? What expectation or hope, that till that 
supreme moment had buoyed up his soul, of help from 
the skies — interposition from the Father in heaven — 
gave way, when that passionate and inexpressibly pit- 
eous voice made itself heard above the mockery of the 
soldiers and the mob, and has made its echoes heard 
through all later time ? Can there be any doubt that this 
older tradition as given in Matthew and Mark is the true 

• Luke xxiiL, 27, 2.8, 34 42, 43, 46-49. *> Matt, xxvi., 56; Mark xiv., 50. 

c 1'-. xxii., 1 ; Mark xv., 34; Matt, xxvii., 46. 



HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND DEATH 33 1 

history of the bearing of Jesus under the suffering to 
which he was subjected, and that the purpose, evident in 
the Fourth Gospel, is also apparent in the Third, to elimi- 
nate from the narrative whatever is indicative of human 
weakness ? How can we help regarding the suppression 
of that irrepressible utterance of a great disappointment 
which wrung his soul, and made him oblivious of physical 
torture, as a concession to an ever-growing conception in 
the minds of the early believers of a triumphing and all- 
conquering deity, which more and more displaced the 
recollection of a meek, suffering: and submissive man ? 



CHAPTER XI. 

PERSONAL PRETENSIONS AND CHARACTER OF 

JESUS. 

" Invective may be a sharp weapon, but over-use blunts its edge. Even 
when the denunciation is just and true, it is an error of art to indulge it too 
long. We not only incur the risk of becoming too vapid, but of actually 
inverting the force of reprobation which we seek to rouse, and of bringing 
it back by recoil upon ourselves. At suitable intervals, separated from each 
other by periods of dignified reserve, invective may become a real power of 
the tongue or pen. But, indulged in constantly, it degenerates into scolding ; 
and then, instead of being regarded as a proof of strength, it is accepted as 
an evidence of weakness and lack of self-control." — John Tyndall, on Goethe's 
"Fa/jenlehre." 

" Science, as distinguished from philosophy, has always been republican. 
Not that it refuses to reverence superior minds; not, perhaps, that it is 
altogether incapable of yielding to the temptation of trusting a particular 
authority for a while too much, or following a temporary fashion. But, as 
a general rule, it rejects as a superstition the notion that a superior mind is 
at all infallible ; it dissents without a scruple from those whom it reverences 
most." — Natural Religion. 

A complete summary of the elements that formed the 
unique character of Jesus, a just estimate of the weight 
and import of his life, will necessarily involve the recapitu- 
lation of particulars of his history that have already been 
considered under appropriate categories, and a renewed 
reference to incidents of his career, and the implications of 
his extant words, that have already been in this discussion 
repeatedly cited. So little is known of what he said, so 
brief and meagre is the record of what he did, that all his 
words and all his acts, so far as their authenticity is rea- 
sonably certified, must be considered on every side, till 
their full significance has been exhausted. 

It may be safest to limit the scope of our conjectures 
by embodying them in tentative answers to the questions 
that have been debated with assurance and acrimony for 
nearly nineteen hundred years : What did he believe him- 
self to be ? What did his age believe him to be ? What 
was he ? These are substantially the questions he is 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 333 

said himself once to have asked : " Whom do men say that 
/, the Son of Man, am ? Whom say ye that I am ? " a 

As has already been seen, Jesus through his whole 
career most frequently spake of himself in the third 
person, as the Son of Man. The epithet was not in itself 
specially assuming ; for " Son of Man," as used poetically 
in Hebrew literature, means Man generically, — the im- 
personation of humanity. It is improbable that Jesus 
used the designation in this unpretentious signification. 
When he is heard affirming of this Man, or Son of Man, 
that he has power on earth to forgive sins; b that all 
things are given to him of God, who is his father ; ° that 
he will come in the glory of his Father, with all the holy 
angels with him ; (1 it is to be inferred that the Son of Man 
is not a person of ordinary human rank, but that the term 
was used in a special sense, and with reference to the man 
whom Ezekiel saw in vision upon the throne above the 
firmament, and to the Son of Man whom Daniel saw 
coming to the Ancient of Days in the clouds of heaven. f 
There would be none of the striking antithesis which 
marked the style of Jesus in these words of his: "Foxes 
have holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; but the 
Son of Man hath not where to lay his head," g if, by Son 
of Man, he meant only a human being. It is no un- 
common lot for men to have no place of their own to 
lodge in ; but what a humiliation for the exalted Son of 
Man, companion of the Ancient of Days, to be less 
securely sheltered than the birds and wild beasts ! 

From the beginning of his public career, Jesus seems 
to have claimed that he was aided by the divine power, 
and impelled by the divine spirit, and to have assumed 
a character and office above the grade of ordinary hu- 
manity. If the question is concluded by the chronological 
order of his conversations given by Matthew, it must be 
allowed that the claim of supreme divine authority was 
nearly simultaneous with his appearance among his coun- 
trymen as a teacher. For, in the Sermon on the Mount, 
he said that he himself would pronounce in the day of 
judgment the sentence of banishment upon false disci- 
ples. h Apparently in the midst of his mission in Galilee, 

•Matt, xvl, 13-15. bMatt. ix.,6. c Matt, xi., 27. dMatt. xvi., 27. 
* Ezek. i.,26. f Dan. vii., 13. SMatt. viii., 20. hMatt. vii. , 23. 



I 

334 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

he is declared to have said, " All things are delivered unto 
me of my Father " ; a and, about the same time, he claimed 
authority to set aside the law of the Sabbath, promul- 
gated in the ten sacred laws of Jehovah. 1 ' But the chro- 
nology is not wholly trustworthy ; and Luke gives a later 
date to one of these declarations. It would have been 
very difficult for the evangelists, redacting the oral tradi- 
tions of Jesus' words after his death, and after the Pau- 
line ideas of his exalted character had become prevalent, 
not to impute to his early consciousness the exaggerated 
estimate of his later days. The verse found both in 
Matthew and in Luke, " All things are delivered unto me 
of my Father : neither knoweth any man the Father save 
the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him," 
is so evidently Johannic in style and thought, so unlike the 
synoptic style of Jesus, that its source is to be looked for 
in an adoption much later than the original tradition. 

As has been seen, the distinct recognition of his Mes- 
siahship, of his heirship to the throne of the kingdom of 
heaven, did not originate with Jesus himself. It was first 
imputed by John the Baptist.' 1 When the unclean spirits 
invoked him as Son of God and as the Holy One, he 
rebuked them; c and when, at last, he communicated to 
his disciples the assurance to which he had come, that 
he was the Christ, he charged them strictly not to make 
it known to any man — so alien then to the modesty of 
his nature seemed so lofty a self-estimation. 1 He began 
his career as a prophet and healer of diseases ; and he 
gained the adhesion of his first disciples as a person in 
whom were the spirit and power of God, rather than as 
the Messiah and hope of Israel. 

In answering the question, what Jesus thought of him- 
self, we must not disregard a crisis, that seemed to have 
changed the project and purpose of his life. This crisis 
occurred in the remote north of Palestine, whither Jesus 
had withdrawn, perhaps to avoid the enmity of Herod, 
perhaps to escape the inquisition and contradiction of the 
Pharisees. Apparently, he has got beyond the rumor of 
his gifts of healing — much narrower than the evangelists 
define it — and, unvexed by the multitude, in the presence 

a Matt, xi., 27. •' Matt, xii., 1-8. cLukex,22. J Matt, iii., 2-11. 
< Mark i., 24, 25, 34, ' Mark viii., 30. 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 335 

of his twelve friends, he gives himself up to a survey of 
what he has done, and of the enterprise that still lies 
unattempted before him. a It was an opportune time for 
confidence and confession. Let us consider what the gos- 
pel tradition preserves of this memorable interview. 

Though hitherto not unconscious of himself, nor indif- 
ferent to public opinion, he now becomes morbidly sensi- 
tive to the opinion of the world, and in his self-exaltation 
he aspires to the highest grades of being. What do men 
think of me ? in a moment of frank confidence he asks of 
his disciples. The answer was one which should have 
been grateful to a most aspiring spirit. Some, said his 
devoted adherents, say that you are John the Baptist 
come back from death. Some say you are Elijah, some 
Jeremiah ; others, one of the great prophets. These sur- 
mises of the credulous Galileans, who had followed him 
out of their cities, and whose sick he had healed, seemed 
but slightly to move him. Is that all ? " Whom say ye 
that I am?" is his next appeal. When Peter, in the 
fervor of his allegiance, replied, " Thou art the anointed 
Messiah, Son of the Living God," Jesus was profoundly 
affected, and with ardor exclaimed : Blessed art thou, 
Simon, son of yonas ! Only the spirit of God could give 
such true insight. Thou art the rock, upon which I will 
build my church, and the gates of hell shall not be strong 
against it; and I will give thee the key of heaven, and 
power to bind and loose on earth as viceroy of the king 
of heaven. b But the old modesty soon comes over his 
spirit ; and, repressing his exultation, he charges his disci- 
ples that his Messiahship is not to be divulged to any 
human being. For the discovery of his high office and 
dignity, which Peter, inspired with insight from the divine 
mind itself, has just made, all honors are offered to him, 
even to sovereign power upon the earth ; but tell no man, 
he charges him, what God' hath revealed to you ; for, 
before my glory in the acknowledgment of God, and the 
plaudits and worship of all good spirits, must come my 
humiliation, shame, and death. So all the prophets have 
declared. Let the world, ignorant who I am, work its 
evil will, till all eyes shall see and every tongue shall con- 
fess the glory, which they have put to shame. The scene 



336 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

is most striking and impressive, and at the same time 
quite human and natural. Surely never at any other 
time did a human soul rise to a higher level of inspiration 
or indulge in vaster dreams. But when Jesus, subduing 
and repressing his gratification at such appreciation, as 
had burst from the lips of his sanguine friend, with sad 
thoughts of the dark and dreadful path, by which he must 
walk to his glory, proceeds to tell how he will go to Jerusa- 
lem, and surfer the scorn and persecution there of scribes, 
elders, and chief priests, and even be killed, Peter, in 
his turn elated at the sovereignty of the Church, so gener- 
ously given to him, thinks the trusted viceroy may at 
least advise, albeit in the affection and kindly solicitude 
of a friend touched with human pity at the coming suffer- 
ings of his Master. "That be far from thee, Lord," still 
respectful, he ventures to interpose, "that shall not be 
unto thee," — not so much evidently to dictate his Mas- 
ter's well-considered course, as to express a motherly 
anxiety, that a cruel death should not befall one beloved. 
He had little comprehended the deep enthusiasm, to 
which this mysterious man had been wrought up, nor 
understood how that gentle spirit, when thwarted and 
contradicted, could flash in the lightning of rebuke." For 
Jesus, who had said : He that is angry with his brother, 
without a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment, and 
he that saith to his brother, Thou fool, shall be in danger of 
hell-fire, 1 ' turned upon Peter, whom he had just declared 
blessed, inspired of the Holy Ghost, the head of the Church 
to be, — upon Peter, whose affectionate solicitude, apparent 
even now to the reader of the narrative, he could not 
have misunderstood — with these withering words : " Get 
thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto vie ; for 
thou savorest not of divine things, but of human things." 
Then, with firm hand, he represses that rapturous de- 
light of himself and his followers, which had culminated 
in anger and cruel, contemptuous words, by calling their 
attention to the sufferings, which all, who would share 
his triumph, must first undergo. " If any man," he said, 
"would be a follower of me, let him follow me to my 
cross." * Do not think of saving your lives by desertion. 

a Matt, xvi., 21-2S. b Matt, v., 22. 

* It is scarcely questionable, that Jesus foreboded and foretold his own death by violence. 
We ha<-e noted the successive steps he took to make such a result the catastrophe of his life. 



PEESONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 337 

If by desertion you should not only save life, but gain the 
whole world, what profit were it ? If you lose your lives, 
you may thus gain the life of your souls. For, when I 
come in the glory of my Father and with his angels, I will 
reward every man according to his integrity. Nor is the 
reward a remote one, for some of you shall not die, till 
you see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. 

Jesus comes from this conference with the twelve with 
purposes either wholly changed or more definitely deter- 
mined upon. Let the Galileans still debate which of the 
great prophets has come back to enlighten his people. 
Jesus knows ; and Peter, inspired of the Holy Spirit, has 
learned that a greater than all the prophets is here — no 
less a personage than the Messiah promised of old to 
Israel. His work in Galilee is done. He need not ask 
even three days of Herod to do cures and cast out devils. 
That epoch has passed ; and he must go to Zion, as the 
King of the new kingdom of heaven. The change in his 
purpose, in the nature of his communications, in the 
temper of his own spirit, even his dull adherents do not 
fail to notice. All the synoptic evangelists, with more or 
less distinctness, indicate it ; and they all assign its date to 
the period of this Caesarean interview. In the First 
Gospel, it is said : " From that time forth began Jesus to 
show unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusa- 
lem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests 
and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third 
day." ■ 

The character and scope of a pure self-consciousness it 
is always difficult to determine. Indeed, a man's estimate 
of himself varies immensely with his moods. It rises at 
words of commendation from other men, at honors and 
rewards that are spontaneously offered and under the sat- 
isfaction and exaltation which come from the accomplish- 
ment of some great task. It sinks under reproaches of 
those whom we esteem, under obloquy and neglect, and. 
in the pain and mortification with which we charge our- 
selves with the carelessness or the ignorance or the want 

a Matt, xvi., 21. 
It is less probable, that he anticipated that the mode of his taking-off would be a form of 
punishment so little known among the Jews as crucifixion. After the crucifixion, the cross 
naturally became in the minds of his followers the symbol of suffering; and those, who re- 
COUnted from fading recollcclion liis conversations, could hardly avoid using a symbolism that 
everywhere permeated the Christian speech and the Christian thought. 



338 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

of skill or courage, which produce our great defeats. So 
with Jesus. His moods changed. He exulted over the 
career of power that seemed opening before him. He 
beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. a All things 
seemed to be given into his hands by God, and himself 
to be the only medium of knowledge of God open to the 
human mind. b In his ardor and confidence, he is ready 
to share his splendid glories with his humble friends. 
They shall eat and drink at his table in his kingdom, and 
have twelve thrones, and sit and reign one over each of 
the tribes of Israel ; and whatever they loose or bind on 
earth shall be loosed or bound in heaven. c Sometimes, 
he even doubts if his enemies will be able to overcome 
him. It was in the prophetic plan that Messiah should 
be cut off, that his grave should be made with the wicked. 
But Jehovah's judgments are not absolute. When he 
had commanded Abraham to offer his precious son as a 
sacrifice, did he not stay his hand, as it was stretched 
forth to shy the already bound victim ? And was not 
Nineveh spared upon its repentance, in spite of an uncon- 
ditioned sentence against it ? So, in the garden of Geth- 
semane, he goes three times to pray, " If it be possible, 
let this cup pass from me." d For a little while, as the 
danger thickens about him, he thinks he will arm his 
friends. When only two swords can be found, however, 
this man of peace, sickening at the thought of using 
them, says, " It is enough." His better thoughts recur to 
supernatural allies. "Thinkest thou now," he said, "that, 
if I so prayed, the Father would not send me twelve 
legions of angels ? " e When the children of Jerusalem, 
who did not join the babes of Galilee in shouting Hosanna, 
and whom he would fain have sheltered from fast-coming 
calamities, as a hen shelters her chickens under her wings, 
shall see him again, they shall say — so he felt assured — 
" Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." t 

His prevalent tone, however, as he went up to Jerusa- 
lem, was one of manifest sadness. He speaks often of 
what is to befall him, rather as his suffering than as his 
glory. And, in his prayer for deliverance, he was in 
agony, so that his sweat fell like drops of blood to the 

aLukex.,18. b Matt, xi., 27. c Luke xxii., 2S-30. d Matt, xxvi., 37-45. 
eMatt. xxvi., 53. I Matt, xxiii., 37~39- 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 339 

ground. For a form so delicate and susceptible as his, 
the sufferings of the Roman method of executing crimi- 
nals must have been unspeakably terrible ; and the cry- 
wrung from his soul, succumbing to the prolonged agony 
of death, was by no means incompatible either with his 
high courage or the grand sacrifice which he believed 
himself to be accomplishing. The Messiah was to have 
been oppressed and afflicted, and brought as a lamb to 
the slaughter. He was to tread the wine-press of the 
divine wrath alone — to be esteemed smitten of God. 

It thus appears, that, up to the eve of his departure 
from Galilee, Jesus had been reticent, perhaps uncertain, 
about his own function and rank in the divine economy, 
and that, simultaneously with that departure, he began to 
assume the dignity and title of the anointed sovereign of 
the heavenly kingdom ; and, while he lived, he continued 
to assert it with more and more assurance. 

What was the contemporary opinion of Jesus among 
his countrymen ? All accounts agree that he was brought 
up to manhood in the Galilean city of Nazareth. 

It is with some distrust that we adopt the chronolog- 
ical order of events as detailed in the first two Gospels, 
differing as it does from that in the Third Gospel. 
Adopting that order, it is found that, after the healing 
of all manner of sickness and disease in every city of 
Galilee, after the report of these miracles coming to the 
ears of John the Baptist had excited in his mind the sur- 
mise that Jesus was the Messiah, after Capernaum, Cho- 
razin, and Bethsaida had been reproached for their dis- 
regard of mighty works done in them, the people of his 
own town, Nazareth, considered Jesus to be the son of 
Joseph, the carpenter, and did not believe in him. a 

The people who came to listen to Jesus, described in 
the Synoptic Gospels as a great multitude from every 
province of Palestine, must not be reckoned among his 
adherents. b They were not of the flock — always a little 
one — to whom he said it was the good pleasure of the 
Father to give the kingdom of heaven. They were not 
of the favored ones, to whom it was given to know its 
mysteries.* 1 He was moved with compassion to give them 
food in the wilderness from the supplies of his own com- 

» Matt, xiii., 54-58. b Matt, iv., 25. c Luke xii., 32. d Luke viii., 10. 



340 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

pany ; but he never seems to have won their confidence, 
nor did he gain even their inchoate discipleship." He 
makes a distinction between the people and his disciples. 
The former he dismisses, the latter he sends before him 
on his return to Galilee. Even the disciples seemed to 
have failed to see anything unusual in the feeding of the 
multitude, for their hearts were hardened. b 

To those who deem the Fourth Gospel historic, it is a 
most significant declaration that, comparatively late in his 
career, his own brothers did not believe in him. Indeed, 
it is not apparent, that, with the exception of James, his 
family had, up to the time of his arrest, given in their 
adhesion to his Messianic pretensions. The mother and 
brethren standing without, and desiring to speak with him, 
instead of being within and listening to him, indicate a 
somewhat hostile attitude, as does his reply : "I recognize 
as my kindred those that do the will of my Father." d In 
that view, we can understand the stress he laid upon the 
sundering of all ties of kindred, as the necessary condi- 
tions of discipleship ; and that, when he said, I am come 
not to send peace, but a sword, to make discord and dis- 
sension in families, and a man's foes shall be they of his 
very household, he was speaking in the sadness, if not the 
bitterness, of his own domestic experience. 6 

After a prophetic career in his native province — it may 
be only for a few months, though it may have extended 
over several years — Jesus undertook the fatal demonstra- 
tion upon Jerusalem. As his going thither, in the mind 
of his followers, if not in his own, was to inaugurate the 
kingdom of heaven, and begin the reign of righteous- 
ness in the world, — a consummation which he seems to 
understand must be preceded by his death, — it is likely 
that nearly all who believed in him accompanied him 
upon his journey. The company seemed to include 
women/ and so many children, that those who applauded 
him in the streets of Jerusalem were spoken of by him 
as babes and sucklings. 8 While some real believers must 
have been compelled by sickness or poverty to abide the 
impending event at home, the faith and devotion of those 
who attended upon him seemed of the most precarious 

a Mark vi., 35-45. h Mark vi., 52. cjohnvii.,5. d Matt xii., 46-50. 
eMatt. x., 34-38. f Luke xxiii., 55. 6 Matt, xxi , 15, if. 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 34I 

kind. When the city turned against him, and his arrest, 
quickly followed by his trial, conviction, and execution, 
was obstructed neither by supernatural nor popular inter- 
position, all his disciples, according to the most authen- 
tic tradition, forsook him; and even Peter denied with 
scornful oaths that he had ever known him. a 

On the day of Pentecost, however, one hundred and 
twenty adherents rallied to his name, influenced by the 
impassioned faith of the twelve disciples, that he had been 
seen alive, and that, by a triumphant resurrection, he had 
established his Messiahship. b All those one hundred and 
twenty were Galileans, as the writer Luke narrates ; c and 
noting how much more rapidly and numerously converts 
were made to the faith by the reputation of the resurrec- 
tion, than by his personal presence, with all the effect of 
his teaching and miracles, it may be justly assumed, that 
a considerable part of the company of believers were 
attracted to the faith by the wonder of the resurrection, 
which had proved efficacious enough, not only to bring 
back Peter to his allegiance, but every one of his fellows, 
whose desertion had only been less conspicuous, because 
their original zeal and confidence had been less pro- 
nounced than his. 

This then was the impression Jesus made upon his age 
and people. Something like a hundred persons out of 
the cities of Galilee so far believed on him, as to follow 
him, until it became evidently unsafe to be identified with 
him. Then, they fled, and left him to the rage of the pop- 
ulace, who hated him, not because they knew aught against 
him, but because their fanaticism had been designedly 
worked upon by his real enemies, the hierarchy of the 
Jewish Church. 

What the Galileans generally, including his unbeliev- 
ing kinsfolk, thought of him cannot be certainly deter- 
mined. In Nazareth, where he lived, his life was once 
attempted. 11 Frequently, he betook himself to uninhabited 
regions away from the cities and villages, either because 
his person was not safe among the habitations of men, or 
because he could not brook their indifference and scepti- 
cism. Did the favor, with which the people at first 
seemed to listen to him, change afterward to suspicion 

"Matt, xxvi., 56, 74. b Acts i., 15. cActsii.,7. d Luke iv., 28, 29. 



342 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

or contempt ? Did they, who were first inclined to rec- 
ognize him as a prophet and preacher of righteousness, 
fall off from him, when he began to exact more rigorous 
requirements of conduct, or to put forth claims to higher 
personal dignity ? The written tradition clearly presents 
two contrasted pictures, one of a reformer going forth 
full of confidence and assurance upon a high and benefi- 
cent mission, the other of a man of sorrow, sore-hearted 
with disappointment, and not repressing keen complaints 
of withheld appreciation. The Fourth Gospel has an 
incident, probably historic, of the falling away from him 
of a body of his disciples, perplexed by some new subtlety 
of his doctrine, and of his mistrust of the fidelity even of 
the twelve.* 

In Jerusalem and Judea there were apparently no open 
adherents to his faith. It seems as if there was not in 
the sacred city a single believing family, with which he 
could safely lodge. A secret friend placed his upper 
chamber at the disposal of the disciples for the Passover 
festival ; but he took such care to preserve his secret that 
curious tradition has not been able to recover it, however 
much it might now redound to his glory. 

Difficulties are encountered in the effort justly to esti- 
mate the character of Jesus, that cannot be met in study- 
ing any other personage of history. We must gather 
one by one his traits from eulogists, who will not suspend 
their admiration long enough for us to see the man. The 
Gospels, too, seem to have been written, when the contro- 
versy with the ancient Church was at its height, and when 
a disposition to find parallels in the fortunes of Jesus, and 
the providential history of the peculiar people, induced the 
writers to see fulfilment of prophecies in the most trivial 
circumstances and the most dissimilar situations. 1 " How- 
ever cogent as arguments these fancies may have been 
at the time they were published, they only serve to con- 
fuse the modern apprehension and obscure the vision of 
a soul, perhaps more worthy of contemplation than any 
that has enlarged our view of the capacities of human 
nature. Certain it is, that in the minds of the biog- 
raphers and friends of Jesus, the prophetic destiny he 
was believed to fulfil quite eclipsed the most vivid impres- 

» John vi., 66, 67. b Matt, i., 23; ii., 6, 15, 18, 23. 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 343 

sions of memory ; and their reminiscences too often give 
us pictures of the trained actor going solemnly through 
a prescribed part, when what we ask for is a majestic and 
original man, speaking and acting spontaneously from the 
resources of his intelligence and the inspirations of his 
genius. 

It is proper to look for the germ and primal force of 
whatever is original and distinctive in the complex Chris- 
tian cultus in Jesus himself. A careful study of his 
intellectual, moral, and spiritual traits will reveal to the 
candid inquirer with more or less clearness the secret of 
his influence upon the world. In his age, the authority 
and reputation of a wise man stood far less than it stands 
now, upon stores of knowledge acquired from books and 
study, and the capacity of communicating truth in writ- 
ten words. He among the Greeks was esteemed a phi- 
losopher, and among the Jews inspired of God, who 
could wisely answer questions without quoting and from 
his own insight. If he could cover an ethical lesson under 
a vivid figure of speech or a picturesque allegory, or com- 
press it into a pregnant and sententious aphorism, winged 
with wit, he was sure of a hearing and of the adherence 
of disciples. Jesus was largely endowed with this talent. 
His parables have stood and will ever stand in the poetic 
imagination as the permanent imagery and illustration of 
most momentous moral judgments. So deeply engraven 
on the human heart are his profoundly sagacious canons 
of conduct, that they have become for generation after 
generation the terms in which conscience and reason 
express themselves. 

Happily, we feel more assurance in tracing to the mind 
of Jesus these intellectual creations, than we do in imput- 
ing to him any thaumaturgic work, or the domination of 
any controlling faith or enthusiasm. We know that the 
annalists, who prepared for us the Synoptic Gospels, with 
their easy credulity, and their limited comprehension on 
the one hand, and with their simplicity and general good 
faith on the other hand, could never have invented the 
allegories and aphorisms, which disclose all that we know 
of the mind of Jesus. The mere memory will retain 
for ages the substance and even the form of a fable or 
of a parable. Each part so depends upon another, each 



344 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

incident and detail so contributes to the moral or to the 
denouement, that to forget and omit one would destroy 
the symmetry of the whole. Just so, those sententious 
maxims and popular by-words, which are handed down 
without writing among illiterate races, and are not 
indebted to the aid of writing among the most culti- 
vated races, acquire in their repetition a certain rhythmic 
melody, which fixes them in the memory from one age 
to another. 

Written, as our genuine Gospels in their first draft 
are believed to have been, from thirty to sixty years 
after the events which they describe, we find them 
containing those very forms of speech, in which Jesus 
was peculiarly gifted, and which the unaided human 
memory is best able to retain. Doubtless, he said many 
unremembered things well worth perpetuation ; but he 
did say, and substantially as they have recorded it, what 
the synoptic annalists impute to him. On the other 
hand, it is morally certain, that the writer of the Fourth 
Gospel — whether the Apostle John or a much later 
disciple — could have found in his own recollections, or 
in the collated recollections of all, who had known 
Jesus, no data for a report of the conversations dramati- 
cally ascribed to him in that work. The unaided human 
memory could never have retained the form or substance 
of prolonged metaphysical disquisitions, flowing feebly 
and diffusely in vague and lifeless words, with their inad- 
equate expressiveness eked out by repetitions, enlivened 
by no imaginative illustrations, and charged with no 
force or impetuosity of diction. The task of recalling 
with all the precision of question and reply the conver- 
sations with the Jews in the temple, or with the disciples 
in the garden of Gethsemane, would be nearly as difficult 
one week, as sixty years after they had occurred ; and 
it is not pretended that the task was undertaken earlier 
than after the last-named interval. 

Many of the replies of Jesus to questions designed to 
entangle him in an inconsistency, an impolicy or an 
impiety, while they exhibit his shrewdness and the readi- 
ness of his intellectual resources, disclose also the em- 
phasis of his moral judgments. When the Pharisees 
said he cast out devils by the power of the chief of 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 345 

devils, Jesus rejoined: "How can a power antagonize 
itself? How can Satan's kingdom be maintained, if he 
is himself busy in seeking its destruction ? " How effect- 
ive was his reply to the delegated scribes from Jerusalem, 
who, coming to learn of his doctrines, had discovered 
and remarked, that the disciples sat down to eat without 
the ceremonial laving of their hands ! " Why do they 
thus," they asked, "transgress the traditions of the 
elders?" "Why do ye," retorted the Master, " trans- 
gress with your traditions the commandments of God?" 
Why do ye allow an empty form of words to cancel the 
law of God, that requires a man to honor his father 
and mother ? 

There is philosophy, wisdom, and even wit in his 
answer to the Pharisees, who asked, if for any cause of 
dissatisfaction, a man might divorce his wife. The dis- 
tinction of sex, he replied, is a distinction of nature. The 
union of the sexes makes a relation so consequential, 
that the married become one flesh, and that too by an 
ordinance established by God. What God hath joined 
together let not man put asunder/ 

There was a conclusiveness about his solutions, that 
left them sticking in minds like axioms, never to be either 
questioned or forgotten. Of that character was his 
settlement of the question of precedence, which his 
disciples raised among themselves. It left a play for 
a noble ambition, and a mode of gratifying it incapable 
of provoking envy. He that would be the greatest among 
you, let him be the servant of all, and let him understand 
that, unlike the dominions of this world, this is to be the 
law of the kingdom of heaven. b 

The personal appeal, the argument to the man, was a 
characteristic of his speech. The men who approached 
him with a strong purpose of not committing or exposing 
themselves, while they directed him to some purely doc- 
trinal or speculative question, found the secrets of their 
hearts suddenly exposed by the keenness of his criticism, 
either in a direct reply, or by a palpable illustration. By 
what authority does the Rabbi do these things, — march 
in tumultuous processions through the city, disturb the 
lawful trade in victims in the environs of the temple ? 

* Matt, xix., 3-9. ^ Matt, xx., 26, 27 ; Markix., 33,35. 



346 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

The Rabbi says he will not answer, but asks another 
question : John Baptist's Gospel, was it of heaven or of 
men ? It is deemed discreet not to answer. Well, he 
says, which is the obedient son, the one that promises to 
obey, and breaks his promise, or he who, having refused, 
afterward repents, and does the thing commanded? 
The adulterers and extortioners repented, when John 
preached righteousness. Why did not ye Pharisees, who 
are the public professors of righteousness, repent ? 

In some of his replies however, verbally complete, and 
effectual answers to the questioner, a self-possessed intel- 
ligence may detect some inconsequence, a virtual evasion 
of the point, which perhaps the question itself did not 
fully set forth. His solution of the difficulty of the 
much-married woman in the resurrection, elsewhere con- 
sidered, is of that character. 

So, too, when he is called to meet the consequences 
of some of his own manifest exaggerations of speech, as 
when he said : " It is easier for a camel to go through the 
eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the king- 
dom of heaven." Who then — probably, what rich man — 
can be saved ? It is impossible with men, not impossible 
with God, explained Jesus, as if there were two kinds of 
possibility in an agency in itself wholly of God. a 

Like men of wit, he appreciated wit in others, and was 
evidently gratified with an answer which manifested 
shrewdness and self-possession. It was not more the rev- 
erence, with which the Syro-Phcenician woman received 
him, and her faith and humility, than her apt retort to his 
brusque and unfriendly banter, that made him so gracious 
to her. b It was his own facetiousness, we must believe, 
rather than the expression of a coarse, national prejudice, 
quite foreign to his character, that made him say : " It is 
not proper to take children's bread and cast it to the 
dogs." She, with woman's sagacity, saw the gentle nature 
under the rough, repellent speech, but was too meek, too 
set upon her purpose, to resent it. " Truth, Master, but 
the dogs may eat the crumbs that fall from the table." 

When the peculiar style of Jesus is once discovered in 
the Gospels, it is impossible to mistake it. The terse, 
piquant colloquies of the first three Gospels are as utterly 

• Matt, xix., 24-26. bMatt. xv., 21-48. 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 347 

unlike the turgid, garrulous, and tautological discourses 
of the Fourth Gospel, as two styles of men of the same 
time could be. The ready resource, the pungent wit, and 
the keen edge of Jesus do appear in that one line, wherein 
he is made to say : u Let him zvho is without sin among you 
cast the first stone." a Some flavor of the sententious acute- 
ness of the great teacher — perhaps the situation, as told, 
was real — had evidently come down to the writer to 
show how incongruous were all his other imputations. 
It is a singular corroboration of the view in these chapters 
presented of the character of the Fourth Gospel, that 
this very passage is deemed an interpolation. 

There is traceable in his mind a fondness for intellect- 
ual puzzles ; and he apparently enjoyed the confusion and 
distraction into which the dull apprehensions of his friends 
were often thrown by exaggerations, in directions, and 
daring figures of speech. Thus, one day, he cautioned 
his disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and 
the Sadducees. Something is at fault with the bread, 
reasoned the disciples. Even the popular mode of pre- 
paring it is tinctured with the general falsity and adulter- 
ating character of the dispensation. " What can the Mas- 
ter mean?" b The figure so explained has been plain 
enough to the modern mind ; but what clew had those 
matter-of-fact and unpoetic minds to its hidden meaning ? 

They were more stupidly at a loss, when, in his pointed 
antithetic epigram, he told the multitude, whom the Phar- 
isees had perplexed by insisting upon some ceremonial 
cleansing: "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth 
a man, but what cometh out of the mouth." c 

That too, lucid as it appears to us, was a parable to 
them. This stupidity even annoyed him. Are ye too, 
he asked, still without understanding ? a Not food going 
into the mouth defiles, but those words and acts, which 
flow out of a foul heart : they make the man unclean. 
He had evidently overrated their perception, when a day 
or two before he said to them, " Blessed are your eyes, for 
they see ; and your ears, for they hear what prophets and 
righteous men had in vain desired to see and hear." f 

His whole scheme of a kingdom of heaven is pre- 
sented in figures and pictures of common things. The 

a John viii., 7. bMatt. xvi., 6-12. c Matt, xv., 11. '1 Matt, xv., 16. 
«Matt. xv., 20. f Matt, xiii., 16, 17, 24. 



348 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

world is a field, its end a harvest. He himself is a sower, 
a fisherman, a shepherd, a bridegroom, a master of a 
feast, a landlord. The elect and non-elect are sheep and 
goats, wheat and tares, good and bad fish, real pearls and 
false pearls. When, at the instance of his friends, per- 
plexed and exhausted by the tropical character of his 
habitual discourse, and apparently thirsting for some 
definite ideas, upon which their prosaic minds could rest 
with some sense of reality, he undertakes to tell them 
plainly of the signs of the kingdom of heaven, and of 
the end of the world, he manifestly tries to impose some 
curb upon his erratic fancy. a But that was impossible. 
From beyond the world of experience, to him, as to the 
most gifted men of genius, only vague and shadowy 
images could come. He drops into unimportant details 
made out of the life of his own time. It is still the local 
Judea — all the world, to the narrow apprehension of his 
hearers. A catastrophe which ought to embrace the 
whole universe cramps itself to the limited geography of 
Palestine. "Let him," he said, " who is in Judea flee 
unto the mountains." 

In estimating the character of Jesus upon its intel- 
lectual side, his relation to the superstition of his age 
must not be overlooked. It is not required of a tran- 
scendent mind, that it shall emancipate itself from all 
traditionary beliefs, and comprehend the laws of nature 
as revealed in the perfected science of the world. All 
knowledge has come into the world by a gradual process, 
involving patient study, and a faculty of ascending from 
facts to principles and laws. It is not expected of a 
great philosopher or a great teacher, that he shall ignore 
the prevalent science of his time, but, accepting it as his 
stand-point, that he shall illuminate it with the light of 
his own spirit. He must take the general tendencies of 
his age as his data, and work out the problem of human 
duty upon the theory they offer. Shakspeare and Dante 
evidently accepted the theory of man's destiny, which 
mediaeval Christianity taught ; and Socrates, though put 
to death for his heresies, seemed not to have disturbed 
by any of his philosophy the fundamental notions of his 
age, that there were immortal gods, who were on the side 

a Matt, xxiv., 3. 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 349 

of human virtue, and who were to be worshipped by 
rites, as well as by righteousness. Admitting that Jesus 
stood in the same relation as men of this order to his 
age, and to its cardinal faiths, we may still place him in 
the category of the world's greatest men. The Jews, 
with the exception of the Sadducees, had come to believe 
in angelic, immortal beings, who attended upon the Deity 
to do him honor, and to be his messengers and the instru- 
ments of his direct operations. Jesus shared this belief. 
At the end of the world, he thought the actual separation 
between good and bad men would be effected by the 
angels, who would be sent forth in sufficient numbers and 
with divine power to assign to each of the myriad crowd 
of souls his proper place. a It was by a retinue of angels 
that his coming again in his kingdom was to be heralded, 
and honored, 5 and so precious was each believer that an 
angel was assigned to stand constantly before the throne 
of God, c to be his vindicator and patron. When meditat- 
ing his arrest by the armed guards of the law, and when 
he had even caused swords to be produced, as if to resist 
them, he told his followers he had only to pray, and twelve 
legions of angels would be sent to his rescue. It is not 
apparent that these angels, which he believed peopled 
heaven in such numbers, and, like the armies of Rome, 
were organized in legions, to guard the divine throne, had 
been men. d The belief of the Pharisees was that the 
dead are still in the underworld ; and the early Christians 
held that Jesus had spent the hours of his apparent death 
in the tomb in a mission to them to make such as were 
worthy the partakers of his resurrection. Jesus evi- 
dently shared this belief ; for he said that they, that were 
deemed worthy of the resurrection, should be in their 
new estate like the angels, which he would not have said, 
if he had not considered angels an order of beings dis- 
tinct from men. 1 

According to the narratives of Matthew, Mark, and 
Luke, the beginning of Jesus' public ministry was sig- 
nalized by a temptation of his integrity conducted by 
Satan himself in the wilderness, after forty days' absti- 
nence from food. How far is the intelligence of Jesus 

aMatt. xxiv., 31. h Matt, xxv., 31. cMatt xviii., 10. 
•IMatt. xxvi., S3, 5». c Acts ii., 27, 31-34 ; I. Peter iii., 19. fLukexx.,35. 



350 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

compromised by the recapitulation of this incident ? The 
question is one, which the sincere minds who believe the 
adventure actually befell him — for whom these chapters 
are not written — need not to answer. Can the legend 
be attributed to the creative imagination of the evan- 
gelists, or of the originators of the oral tradition, out of 
which the Gospels were woven ? There appears in their 
narratives a strong tendency to exalt the life of Jesus, 
whom they believed a supernatural being above the range 
of ordinary human experience. The exclamations of the 
devout prophets and prophetesses, who welcomed his 
birth as of a sovereign prince, the jealousy of Herod 
excited in his very infancy, the visit of the Magi that 
travelled from the remote East guided by a star, to do 
homage to him in his swaddling clothes, and the choirs 
of angels singing paeans of congratulations to the world, 
must be attributed to this tendency. The imputation to 
evil spirits of an intelligence keener than that of men, 
enabling them to perceive his divinity, sprung from the 
same tendency. It might well comport with this sen- 
timent to believe that the powers of hell were seriously 
alarmed at the advent of Jesus to the world, and that to 
counteract the beneficial agencies he came to establish, 
by assaulting his integrity and destroying the power he 
had with God, was a mission demanding the personal 
intervention of their prince. 

On the other hand, this legend of the temptation is too 
dignified in tone, too complete and consistent in its inci- 
dents, to be the work of any prosaic annalist. We recog- 
nize in its masterly impersonation a genius kindred to 
that which had inspired a similar conception in the an- 
cient poem of Job. Great lives, like that of Jesus, are a 
mingling of truth and poetry. The trial to which he was 
subjected was the trial of timidity and doubt,- of the 
allurement of pleasure and ambition, which assails every 
heroic soul upon whom is laid the burden of a great 
thought or of a great enterprise. Jesus had told, in his 
vivid and poetic style, of purely internal conflicts, and 
the literal minds of his unimaginative disciples received 
his disclosure in the gross form of the canonical legend. 

In a mind like his, in which the domains of the real 
and that of the ideal so overlie each other, it is difficult 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 35 1 

to detect his veritable faiths. It seems on the whole 
a just conclusion from all our data, that, although he 
imputed his own misgivings and hesitation on beginning 
his career as a prophet — as he did Peter's prudence, 
which later sought to avert the crisis of his career as the 
Son of Man that was to come in glory — to the immedi- 
ate suggestion of Satan, he nevertheless did believe in 
the reality of devilish personalities, and in the existence 
of a chief of devils. 

Sometimes, when desired, Jesus himself made a com- 
plete separation betwixt his ideal and poetic illustration 
of things and his real cognition of things themselves. 
Thus, when he explained the parable of the tares and 
the wheat, for every figure of his mind he supplied the 
corresponding reality in the nature of things, as they 
appeared to him. The sower of the good seed is myself 
— the Son of Man — the field, the world ; the wheat 
typifies the children of the kingdom, or these little ones 
that believe in me; the tares are the children of the 
wicked, and the enemy that sowed them is the devil. In 
such a literal and precise substitution of facts for rhetor- 
ical figures, it would be most incongruous to find a figure 
explained by a figure. a 

It was in the midst of a most literal and bald setting 
forth of the incidents of the judgment to come at the 
end of the world, that he declares the place of punish- 
ment for the accused was prepared for the devil and his 
angels. There was already in the economy of the divine 
government an everlasting fire, which would have had its 
victims, though mankind had all repented, or had not 
been born. Suspecting, doubtless, a fidelity that had 
been too much boasted, he said to Peter, with all the 
solicitude of friendship: "Simon, Simon, Satan hath de- 
sired to have you, and sift you like wheat ; but I have 
prayed that your faith may not fail." b 

What domination over the mind and moral sense of 
Jesus did the sacred writings of his nation exercise ? 
How far did he accept, how far did he rise above, the 
prevalent ideas of his time? With boldness he reviewed 
the great moral code of his race, then and still consid- 
ered to be so complete and perfect, as to be imputed to 

ft Matt, xiii., 36-43 ; xxv., 41. bLuke xxii., 31, 32. 



352 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

the legislation of God. The deeper spiritual insight, 
that discovered its inadequacy and imperfection, reveals 
the force and originality of Jesus. It is in his function 
of seer, teacher, and reformer, that he has most perma- 
nently and most beneficially affected the world. But 
along with this strength and keenness of moral intuition, 
that exalt and ennoble him, it is necessary not to overlook 
a certain conformity to modes of thought, which even, 
what may be called the Christian cultus, has repudiated, 
and to an undoubting acquiescence in improbable and 
impossible legends, which have become, on the whole, 
offensive to Christian taste. 

It is apparent that to Jesus, as well as to the scribes 
and ordinary Jews, the Hebrew prophetic writings were 
divine oracles, and all the patriotic denunciations and 
vaticinations, which modern scholarship has determined 
to have reference solely to political events, in the life- 
time of the prophets, who wrote them, had a certain 
cabalistic and universal significance, and that in them 
one hears, not the local patriot uttering his thought, 
sometimes wisely and eloquently, sometimes extrava- 
gantly and even bombastically, but the divine word, 
making these writers the medium of a communication 
to all mankind. 

There was a temple song in use among the Jews from 
an early time, beginning : " The Lord said unto my lord, 
Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies 
thy footstool."" It appealed to the popular ambition, 
exclusiveness and love of vengeance. It was the reac- 
tion of the unquenchable national spirit against the suc- 
cessive defeats and oppressions, which a proud but feeble 
people had suffered for centuries from the powerful 
nations that surrounded them. The Lord would say to 
some Israelitish prince, through the mouth of the popu- 
lar devout poet of his time : / will exalt thee, as it were, 
to my right hand, while thy people 's enemies shall be trod- 
den under their feet. There had been a period of na- 
tional glory, which justified such a boast ; and the indomi- 
table race-spirit assured them, that it must come again. 
But this boastful song had for Jesus quite another mean- 
ing. The Lord, who is to sit on Jehovah's right hand, 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 353 

is Messiah ; and, since it was David, who first sang that 
inspired song, how can he call him Lord who is his son? 
That a father should thus honor his son was much more 
incompatible with the old Jewish ideas of paternal dignity, 
than with our ideas. The scribes cannot solve the riddle ; 
but neither he who put it, nor they who were confounded 
by it, seemed to have doubted that it was David who had 
uttered the words, and that it was by the divine Spirit 
that they were inspired. 1 

Accepting this view of the Scriptures of his people, we 
must not be surprised to find him believing in the legend 
of the flood and of the sudden destruction of all the 
inhabitants of the world, except Noah and his family. 
The burning of Sodom and Gomorrah by a rain of fire 
and brimstone and the escape of Lot were also to him 
historical events as unquestionable as the slavery of his 
ancestors in Egypt, or their conquest of Canaan. b We 
have no data for denying that there was in prehistoric 
times some wide-spread local flood, whose devastation is 
perpetuated in the story of the deluge, or that in the 
same period populous cities had been overwhelmed by 
volcanic disturbances, like those known to have buried 
Pompeii and Herculaneum. But the modern mind finds 
purely physical causes for such calamities, and does not 
charge God either with the cruelty of producing them or 
the treachery of giving no warning when they impend. 
Like other sentient creatures, man takes advantage of the 
favorable conditions of life, which a cooling planet — 
kerneled with fire, and turned loose among attracting 
worlds — affords during certain stages of its evolution; 
and, when some cosmic convulsion smashes his petty 
housekeeping, he is not required to impute the catastro- 
phe to his own sin, or to some spirit of vindictiveness on the 
part of God. But when, as in the time of Jesus, the most 
intelligent minds contemplated the sovereign will as pro- 
ducing all phenomena arbitrarily, and so morally respon- 
sible for them, it was necessary to find for floods and 
earthquakes, storms and pestilences, a cause in the wrath 
of God provoked by the abnormal sinfulness of men. 

Turning to the moral and spiritual side of the nature 
of Jesus, piety is found to be his predominant trait. 



354 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Toward God, as spiritual father of men, as the crea- 
tive, vivifying power of nature, he maintained an un- 
bounded reverence and submission, mingled, as in no 
other person, with a certain affection and even familiarity 
born of confidence in his own exalted dignity and destiny. 
He was wont to go to God as to an ever-present friend 
and father, in a communion of spirit which hardly seemed 
to need the intervention of words. Though it is related 
that he once betook himself to a mountain and spent the 
night in prayer, it must be concluded that, as in Geth- 
semane, this was a struggle with himself, an effort to 
coerce a timid or reluctant will to steadfast conformity 
to the high purpose to which he had consecrated himself. 
The effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous man is often 
a self-exhortation. 

Next in prominence to his piety it is easy to recognize 
his courage. The career he entered upon was full of 
peril. The coldness and alienation of his family, the con- 
tempt of the leaders of society in Church and State, left 
him nearly isolated, supported among his friends by no 
large or constant soul. With more than the delicacy of 
woman, he shrank from the physical and mental suffering 
to be endured, as the rejected and slain Messiah, on his 
way through death to the glory of an everlasting throne. 
His sensitive heart felt keenly the stings of reproach, 
was soothed by words of high regard, and responded 
warmly to the simplest acts of deference and courtesy. 
His biographers, prepossessed with the prophetic idea 
of an unresisting victim brought to the slaughter, who, 
when he was reviled, reviled not again, have characterized 
Jesus as meek. He once so characterized himself. 1 But 
when we find Moses, who, in hot anger, slew an Egyp- 
tian oppressor, and who, in uncontrollable fury, brake 
the tablets of the divine law, and caused the summary 
slaughter of three thousand of his people, called "very 
meek, above all the men upon the face of the earth," b 
we know that the Jews must have used the term in quite 
other than the modern sense. This prophetic type, unless 
in this peculiar sense, seems ill to comport with the lofty 
courage of his convictions, which distinguished Jesus. 
It rather appears that his constant self-possession, the 

»MatU xi. f 29. bNum. xii., 3. 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 355 

superiority to other men he assumed, the authority with 
which he criticised the oldest traditions and the most 
fundamental laws ; his dignified bearing before the San- 
hedrim, and the assertion before Pilate of his coming 
glory, indicate that he wore his robe of kingship in a 
lofty and royal way. Whatever he may have been, it 
must be confessed that no man ever asserted or more 
consistently maintained a diviner pretension. 

No view of the character of Jesus will be complete, that 
does not exhibit what may be called the thoroughness of 
his ethical methods. All qualifications of a moral princi- 
ple, all restrictions of its application, all abatements of its 
integrity, seemed wicked and impious to his clear-sighted 
and loyal soul. His methods with all evils and all falsi- 
ties were summary. He could see no soul of good in 
things evil. Reform it altogether and at once, was his 
comprehensive requirement. What he meant by faith — 
that faith, which could remove mountains, and to the 
force of which nothing should be impossible — was this 
spiritual integrity, this absolute confidence in and alliance 
with that supreme righteousness, which was the order and 
method of God, and the law of all vital progress, rather 
than any intellectual belief in himself, or in any abstract 
proposition. His strong will, his wholeness and clearness 
of moral conviction, and his regard of nature as something 
that was, or at least might be, completely subservient to 
the beneficent will of God, were the secret of what he did, 
that seemed to his contemporaries, perhaps to himself, to 
be miraculous. The consciousness of his own power to 
invoke the supreme source of all power was the first sug- 
gestion of his Messiahship. He believed he knew that 
a reign of righteousness was in the plan and promise of 
God. What the popular faith, misinterpreting the oracles 
of divine prophecy, had accepted as the glory of Israel, 
he — admitted as a son to the confidence of Jehovah — 
had come to understand as the kingdom of heaven. He 
had never once estimated the grand aggregate of happi- 
ness involved in its realization, nor distributed its satis- 
factions to the capacities of the great mob of sentient 
creatures. It was not to be a reign of happiness for the 
subjects, but of righteousness and justice, and of glory 
for the sovereign. What if its enormous compensations 



35^ OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

should inure only to a handful of elect souls ! What if 
its stupendous results could be justified only in the in- 
scrutable satisfactions of God himself ! It is no more the 
thirst of virtue, that it shall find in heaven appreciation 
and reward, than it is the lust of evil to fly deliriously into 
the fascinating flames of hell and be consumed. 

All great souls have looked upon the miseries, the 
sins, the evils of the world, as the result of some great 
mistake and mishap, some falling out of the perfect order 
of paradise. Nothing can balance the awful catastrophes 
which theology places at the end of human history on this 
planet, but some wilful disobedience and rebellion of a 
creature of angelic intelligence and unalloyed bliss at the 
beginning of that history. What wonder that these great 
souls have confidence that, by a word, they can summon 
back these angelic intelligences to their primitive alle- 
giance, and disenchant them from the spells in which 
Satan has bound them ! 

Either Jesus learned his radicalism from John the Bap- 
tist, whose axe was at the root of every tree to cut down 
and cast into the fire every corrupt and false growth, or 
else this uncompromising spirit of the ascetic iconoclast 
was the secret of the attraction he exercised upon the 
enthusiastic soul of his convert, who so far surpassed him. 
It requires the judicious aptitude of Paul — that ability to 
see truth from other points of view, and good in worldly 
and even evil men — to make Christianity a fit instru- 
mentality of civilization, and give its heavenward expand- 
ing branches a strong and lusty root in the soil of the 
world enriched by decaying faiths. But alongside of the 
politic and accommodating Pauls, there have always been 
the imitators of Jesus cutting with sharp repentance and 
reform the tangled knots of evil, which the former have 
had the patience to untie. 

Tradition has given us the character of Jesus adorned 
with the lustre of personal virtues, due in him, as in most 
good men, to a happy endowment of nature. The Jews 
repudiated his lordship and crucified him, but they have 
not maligned him. There is no imputation, even among 
the enemies of his faith, that he was unjust, cruel, sensual, 
or envious. In him culminated that type of character 
— oftener found among women — strong in purity and 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 357 

integrity ; that loves with passionless affection what is 
brave and heroic, and is moved with a motherly pity for a 
good man environed with peril or involved in excessive 
toil or care. He easily and by instinctive impulse con- 
formed to the severe rules of self-control he laid down 
for others, so that his words, his manners, his very 
presence, carried with them ministrations of chastened 
thoughts to the profligate, and purposes of repentance to 
the sinful. 

In the true spirit of a practical reformer, Jesus had 
set himself most strenuously to combat the corrupting 
sensual tendencies of the Greek and Semitic races, with 
whose vices he was conversant. With no premonitions, 
that, after his time, the centre of civilization would move 
westward; and that among chaster races the prevalent 
form of sensuality — the active agent in deteriorating the 
quality of the human race — would be alcoholic drunken- 
ness, Jesus left no precepts against intemperance. His 
own habits were social, if not convivial. He used wine 
as a pledge of fidelity, and a symbol of the blood he was 
himself to shed in passing from the subordination of a 
despised servant to the glories of a heavenly kingdom. 
Contrasting him with the ascetic John, his countrymen 
had called him a glutton and a wine-bibber, and it did not 
stir his sensitive spirit to resent the imputation ; for, he 
said, wisdom is justified of her children. 

It is certain that the sober second thought of, what 
may be called the Christian sentiment of the world, has 
opposed to the radical ideas of Jesus serious qualifications 
and limitations. Out of the attraction of sex, which man 
has brought up from the inferior orders of creation, which 
lie behind him, have undoubtedly sprung all the domestic 
affections, as well as those sentiments of kinship, which 
dignify his nature and assert its superiority. That one- 
ness of flesh, which the association of man with woman, 
resulting under the ordinance of nature in offspring be- 
comes, Jesus perceived with a philosophic insight. But, 
while declaring a law for ordinary humanity he as plainly 
declared, that it was not a rule for himself, nor for the 
order of ideally perfect men, to which he belonged, and 
which it was his effort to multiply in the world. In 
the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in 



358 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

marriage." They who can undergo the ancient test prof- 
fered to the most aspiring spirits will become celibates 
for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. b By one of those 
possibilities of God, the married may enter the kingdom 
of heaven, but not its highest rank. The first impulse 
of the genuine disciple is to forsake his family. What 
is my mother, he asked, or what are my brothers to me ? 
These disciples that do the will of God are my brothers, 
my sisters, and my mother. The ties of sympathy in 
a common enterprise and in a common faith have quite 
outgrown the ties of natural affection, in him abnormally 
weak. In one of his parables, he classes the cares of 
avarice and the preoccupation of business along with the 
strength of marital fondness, as hindrances to the grace 
of the gospel, — " I have married a wife, and therefore T 
cannot comc." d It was not only houses and lands, that 
were impediments in the way to the kingdom of heaven, 
and for the sacrifice of whiclf a man was to be rewarded 
a hundred-fold, but father and mother, wife and children. 6 
He once told the multitude following him : If any man 
come to me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife 
and children, and brothers and sisters, and his own life 
also, he cannot be my disciple. f 

Looking back over those spasmodic and abortive efforts,, 
which individuals and masses of men have from time to 
time made to introduce a better order into the world, and 
to bring mankind up to some new control of the evil influ- 
ences that environ them, frequent instances are found of 
this hostility to marriage, this contempt of the domestic 
relations, and repressal of the affections, that flow out 
of them. Too often has the spectacle exhibited itself of 
men forsaking wives and children for some vision of the 
kingdom of heaven. Why, under the pressure of strong 
religious enthusiasm, does it so often become apparent, 
that there is some incompatibility of spirit between a 
man and the woman, who has given him her affection, 
and staked upon his trusted integrity the hope and fortune 
of her life ? It is not, as it evidently was in Jesus, a vision 
of a heaven of purity, that lures such a man away from his 
fidelity and his duty, but some abnormal access of that 

n Luke xx., 35. bMatt. xix., u, 12. c.Matt. xii., 4S, 50. 

xiv., 20. e Matt, xix., 29. ' Luke xiv., 26. 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 359 

passion, which in man's nature is stored too near his 
devout instincts not to share disastrously in their ex- 
plosions. 

We look in vain through the New Testament literature 
for the high estimate of woman, and the chaste idea of 
marriage, which finds its expression in modern poetry, 
and in the thought and speech of well-bred men. To 
Paul, marriage seemed a sanctioned compromise with a 
natural instinct too powerful to be controlled. 21 There is 
traceable in the disclosures of Jesus a conception only less 
gross, in that it is less distinct. Shrinking from marriage 
himself, he delicately hints, that it is a relation incompati- 
ble with that perfection of character, which the select so- 
ciety of the heavenly kingdom demands. 1 " Neither he nor 
Paul had attained that idea of wedlock, in which the ani- 
mal and instinctive is absorbed in the affectional; in 
which two persons, preferring each other before all the 
world, become, by a sympathy running through their 
whole natures, not only one flesh, but one soul ; so that 
what was earthly in its origin becomes spiritual in its 
perfection, — the safeguard of all chastity, the spring of a 
refined and refining love, flowing out to children and to 
friends, to the race of men, and to the divine ideals of 
the imagination. 

Neither the Greek, the Jewish, nor the Christian culture 
brought these influences into civilized society. They had 
their origin in the Teutonic courtesy and honor, which 
among the barbarous German tribes placed woman by the 
side of man, equal in his confidence and respect, — that 
Teutonic courtesy, of which mediaeval chivalry and 
knighthood became the later expressions, and which, 
especially among the English and German races, gives 
to woman to-day that lofty homage and respect, under 
the restraint of which, the rudest men grow ashamed of 
their selfishness and brutality. 

Passing from these sins, that spring from an ill-regulated 
sense, let us consider those, that result from a feeble con- 
trol of the reason and conscience over the thought and 
word. Anger is the self-assertion of the soul against as- 
saults by injurious actions or words ; and the precept of 
Paul: "Be ye angry, and sin not ; let not the sun go down 

a I. Cor. vii. bMatt. xix., io-ia. 



360 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

on your ivratJi" wisely recognizes the natural function of 
anger, as well as the necessity for checking its exaggera- 
tions." While anger, commensurate to the injury that it 
repels, adds tenfold to the energy of a man, and some- 
times raises him into the aspect of sublimity, excessive 
anger, too long cherished, too cruelly expressed, degrades 
a man's dignity before all that witness it, and leaves him, 
in his swift remorse, weak, pitiful, and open to assaults 
from without, and self-reproaches from within, under the 
combined influence of which he is almost sure to inflict 
some permanent injury and shame upon himself. 

Nothing can be more excellent or complete than the 
ethical rules inculcated by Jesus to restrain this danger- 
ous impulse of the soul. Blessed are the meek, blessed 
are the reviled. Anger without cause is an offence 
kindred to murder. Be reconciled with your brother, 
agree with your adversary, before performing any relig- 
ious worship. Resent not injury, and give your cheek to 
the smiter. Bless them that curse you, that ye may be 
the children of the Highest, who does good to the unkind 
and the unthankful. By these lofty principles, by which 
he invited men to rule their spirits, it cannot be invidious 
to judge his own.' 

How can his antipathy to the scribes and Pharisees, 
and the severe invectives he hurled against them, be made 
consistent with this high standard ? A careful study of 
the Jewish history and literature forces upon us the con- 
viction, that there had been a steady intellectual and 
moral progress of the people from their savage, sensual, 
and idolatrous condition when rescued from Egyptian 
slavery by Moses, down to the time of Jesus. Virtuous, 
devout, and clear-sighted patriots and prophets had ap- 
peared among them from time to time, who saw that the 
uniform plan of nature indicated the unity of the deity, 
and that the deity was on the side of rectitude and virtue; 
but the mass of the people were ignorant, sensual, avari- 
cious, and cruel. Their gods were altogether like them- 
selves, and the decent rites, the severe virtue, the ab- 
sence of images, the repression of appetite, which charac- 
terized the cultuSy which the prophets extolled, seemed 
empty and gloomy, when contrasted with the joyous 

aEph. iv., 26. bMatt. v., 5, 11. 22, 24, 39, 44, 45. 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 361 

offerings, the lascivious dances, the gilded and decorated 
images, by which their heathen neighbors appealed to 
their grosser sense. It was told in the very glory of 
one of the Israelitish kings, when, by reason of rest from 
the oppression of powerful enemies, the nation was free 
to follow the popular tendency in religion, that there were 
only seven thousand worshippers of Jehovah in the whole 
land. a Down through the prophetic dispensation, it is 
evident that there is a divided sentiment — that the very 
monotheistic idea is antagonized by a belief, sometimes 
dominant even with the king and government, in the gods 
of the nation ; and when, under such sovereigns as Josiah 
and Hezekiah, the monotheistic faith gets the upper hand, 
it is evidently only the court religion, the mass of the 
people remaining idolaters. 

The New Testament narratives introduce us to an 
entirely different condition of society. Whether from 
the influence of the prophetic literature, or the carefully 
preserved and taught written law, that had taken the 
place of the ancient traditions ; whether from the disci- 
pline of its defeats, enslavement, and exile, or from some 
access of new ideas from Persia, Egypt, or Greece, the 
Jews, after their long training, after their stiff-neckedness, 
— of which their great teachers complained, — had at 
last become fairly converted to their own religion. The 
cardinal evils of mankind still existed. There was lux- 
ury and licentiousness, and the degraded classes that 
ministered to them. There was the pride and oppres- 
sion of the rich and powerful, and the envy and servility 
of the poor. Men were scourged, as they are to-day, 
by the natural punishments that follow hard upon their 
vices ; and they were awed by the sad vicissitudes, that 
lie in the path of the most prosperous lives, into at least 
a slavish conformity to the decencies and plausible moral- 
ities of conduct. But the mass of the people lived quiet 
and orderly lives, true to their domestic obligations, 
exercising charity and kindliness toward each other, 
rendering obedience to the laws, and cherishing piety 
t ward (j<h\. There are brief but graphic pictures of the 
common life of common men introduced among the 
questionable chronicles of the patriarchs of the race, 

• I. Kings xix., 18. 



362 OPINION'S AXD CHARACTER OF JESUS 

the founders of the nation, and among the exploits and 
conquests of its heroes and kings. We have similar pict- 
ures of the Palestine of the Christian era ; and the moral 
and intellectual contrast, to the great advantage of the 
later period, is most striking. 

At the head of this movement, and fairly entitled to 
the honor of this renovation, stood the scribes and Phari- 
sees. Doubtless there were among them formalists, 
pretenders, and hypocrites, as there have been in all ages, 
among the classes arrogating to themselves special sanc- 
tity and consideration as the ministers of religion and 
the exemplars of piety. But, as a class, they were sin- 
cere, upright, and virtuous, and shaped their lives into 
some reasonable conformity to the rules of the morality 
which they inculcated. 

The old Jewish scriptures had stories, doubtless sadly 
true, of the debauchery of the priestly order, that minis- 
tered at the altar, a and of lying prophets that sold their 
oracles for gain or kingly favor. b But in all the traditions 
of the career of Jesus, and of the acts of his apostles, no 
story is told, no hint even given, that the scribes and 
Pharisees, the accredited ministers of religion in the time 
of Jesus, were either extortionate, oppressive, luxurious, 
licentious, bigoted, or persecuting. On the other hand, 
they are always introduced in such relations, and with such 
estimation, as to command respect and confidence. Thus 
the scribes and Pharisees are said to have followed John 
the Baptist to the wilderness, and to have asked baptism 
of him. c Before Jesus was personally known in Jerusa- 
lem, they sent messengers to him to learn of his doctrine 
and his works of healing. d As a general thing, they ac- 
corded to him the title of Rabbi, listened to him with 
attention and respect, and assented with hearty faith to 
many of his expositions of the fundamental matters of the 
law. 6 

It was a chief Pharisee that invited Jesus on two differ- 
ent occasions to dine with him, and whose hospitality he 
accepted, as he would not that of a hypocrite and extor- 
tioner/ John's narrative declares that Nicodemus, a chief 
among the Pharisees, went to Jesus by night, and gave in 

n. ii., 12. I'll. Chron. xviii., 5. c Matt, iii., 7. d Matt, xv., 1. 
>• Mark. xii. , 32 ; Luke xx., 21. f Luke xiv., 1 ; vii., 36. 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 363 

his adhesion to some of the most subtle and mystic doc- 
trines of the new faith." The statement is doubtless 
a part of the general fiction of the Fourth Gospel ; but it 
would hardly have been made a part of the plot, if there 
were not instances well known of the friendly attitude of 
enlightened Pharisees toward the scheme of doctrine, 
which Jesus taught. Joseph of Arimathea, who braved 
the terrorism following the crucifixion, that had scattered 
even the twelve, to give honorable burial to the body of 
Jesus, was a Pharisee. 13 

But the most striking vindication of the good repute 
of the Pharisees is found in one of their distinguished 
fraternity, Paul, who became the founder of historic Chris- 
tianity. The fact that Paul was not only a converted 
Pharisee, but that, after his mind had been enlightened, 
as he believed, by the divine spirit, he gloried in his Phar- 
isaic faith, to which he still clung, as in no wise incom- 
patible with his fidelity to Jesus, is one of the anomalies 
of the New Testament tradition. He declares in one of 
his epistles to a church — doubtless largely made up of 
Jews, but in a heathen city — that he was a Pharisee of 
the strictest sect. Evidently no ill repute of the Phari- 
sees had reached that Greek city in the time of Paul. 
They stood in his mind, and in the mind of his corre- 
spondents, in the high regard, in which the world holds 
now the Stoic philosophers and the primitive Christians. 
If we would know what basis there was in Jerusalem it- 
self for the imputations cast so indiscriminately against 
this reputable sect, we may learn how slight it was from 
the fact, that Paul, when on the point of being torn to 
pieces by a mob in that city for teaching, as it was be- 
lieved, doctrines incompatible with the laws of Moses, had 
a sudden access of popularity by crying out, that he was 
a Pharisee* Only the names of well-reputed men are 
elements of strength in a popular commotion. 

Last of all is the testimony of Josephus, certainly com- 
petent to corroborate this testimony of Paul's, who says 
of the Pharisees : — 

They live meanly, and despise delicacies in diet; and they follow the con- 
duct of reason, and what that prescribes to them as good for them they do, 

" John iii., 1, 2. b Luke xxiii., 50, 51. e Phil, iii., 5 ; Acts xxvi., 5. 

d Acts xxiii., 6. 



364 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

and they think they ought earnestly to strive to observe reason's dictates for 
practice. They believe that souls have an immortal vigor in them, and that 
under the earth there will be rewards and punishments, according as they 
have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be de- 
tained in an everlasting prison, but the former shall have power to revive 
and live again. On account of which doctrines, they are able greatly to per- 
suade the body of the people; and whatever they do about divine worship, 
prayers, and sacrifices, they perform them according to their direction, inso- 
much that the cities give great attestation to them, on account of their en- 
tire virtuous conduct, both in the actions of their lives and in their dis- 
courses also. 

This testimony of Josephus to the good character and 
repute of the Pharisees is the more weighty, in that it has 
been concluded that he did not himself belong to the sect, 
but favored the doctrines and practices of the Essenes ; 
and because he does not speak of the Pharisees in terms 
of unmixed eulogy. For elsewhere he speaks of their 
love of intrigue and of power, — traits of character, which 
ecclesiastical bodies have exhibited in every age, — and 
says that during the reign of Alexandra, who held the sov- 
ereignty of Palestine nine years, under the Roman pro- 
tectorate, the Pharisees were the real rulers, through the 
influence they obtained over her. But as this influence 
was obtained by their reputation for wisdom and virtue, 
and was exercised in punishing those who had been guilty 
of massacres and oppression under a former reign, this, 
too, is rather a testimony in favor of the sect. 

Toward this body of men, evidently the e'lite of their 
nation, the attitude of Jesus was one of hostility and sus- 
picion from the first. He, who had said so wisely : Judge 
not, that ye be not judged ; for with what judgment you 
judge, you shall be judged," had, when we are first intro- 
duced to him, judged them with a severity, that knew 
neither mercy nor moderation. When the wedding feast 
of his kingdom of heaven was prepared, he recognized the 
propriety of sending his invitation to the bidden guests. b 
But the Pharisees were not bidden. There cannot be 
found in the traditions of the gospel any overtures made 
to the most religious men of the time to accept the new 
religion. 

One of the purposes of the writer of the Fourth Gospel 
may have been to rescue Jesus from the imputation of 
a too uncharitable and harsh attitude toward the religious 

»Matt. vii., i, 2. bMatt. xxii., 3. c Matt. iii. , 7 ; v., 20; viii., 12. 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 365 

classes of his time, which the synoptic narratives seem to 
have cast upon him. With some such view, that writer 
brings Jesus prematurely and frequently to Jerusalem, 
and makes his chief activity consist in doctrinal and casu- 
istic discussions, publicly conducted in the temple with 
representatives of the scribes and Pharisees, of which dis- 
cussions the older tradition had taken no cognizance what- 
ever. It may have been an instance of the great sagacity 
of Jesus, that he concluded in advance, that an order of 
men proud of their prestige of sanctity, complacent in 
their intelligence of the will of God, were not likely to 
submit to be taught by a Galilean carpenter how to at- 
tain the divine favor and the everlasting life. But as Gar- 
rison, when inspired with a new sense of the wrongs of 
the slave, went first to the ministers of a religion that 
taught the equal brotherhood of men ; as Columbus, pos- 
sessed with the presentiment that India could be reached 
by sailing across the Western ocean, betook himself first 
to geographers and adventurous navigators ; so it would 
seem that the first mission of a new religion should have 
been to the reputable teachers and exponents of the old. 
But this, Jesus evidently did not intend. As has been 
already said, he shared the prejudice of John the Baptist, 
who declared that the Pharisees and Sadducees were out- 
side of the pale of mercy of his gospel, and had nothing 
to expect but the wrathful fire, which should consume 
every evil tree. a In a kindred discrimination, Jesus said 
in his first discourse that the grade of integrity, to which 
the scribes and Pharisees had attained, was not such as 
would in any event prove a passport to his kingdom of 
heaven. '' Later in his public ministry, when certain 
scribes and Pharisees approached him with the deferen- 
tial title of Rabbi, and would see one of his miracles, he 
turned upon them with the rebuke, that they represented 
to him the wicked and adulterous people of that time. 
The times are evil, the plausible public virtue is hypocrit- 
ical, the seeming pure are full of adulterous desires and 
practices, and you, who lead the moral sentiment of the 
age, are no better than the multitudes you lead. But 
why is the generation evil and adulterous? Jesus gives 
himself the reason. When Jonah went through Nineveh, 

a Matt, iii., 9, 10. b Matt, v., 20. 



366 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

warning it of its destruction, the inhabitants believed and 
repented : when he came, warning the world of its doom, 
it neither believed nor repented. He believed some 
evil spirit had taken possession of his countrymen. It 
seemed to have been cast out, doubtless, when so many 
flocked to listen to John's preaching repentance, and to be 
baptized, and when great multitudes followed himself out 
of all the Galilean cities, — as he hoped first, to listen to 
his words, but, as he believed afterward, only to be fed by 
his supplies. a But the wicked spirit was only temporarily 
expelled. He had gone through dry places seeking rest, 
and had returned with seven worse devils to possess the 
victim, whose last state is worse than his first. So shall 
it be with this wicked generation. b 

When the Pharisees came again with the Sadducees, 
asking for a sign, he rallied them with the well-known 
red sunset, as a sign of a bright to-morrow, and of a 
ruddy dawn as a sure herald of a dull day ; and called 
them hypocrites, because they knew these signs, but 
could not prognosticate the tokens of an impending judg- 
ment. The very presence of these sects disturbed his 
spirit ; and it was slowly, and after an effort, that he could 
recover its serenity. After they had left him, he told his 
disciples to beware of their insidious and noxious teach- 
ings and influence. 11 He recognized the elders, chief 
priests, and scribes as his enemies. He knew his people 
would never believe in his Messiahship, while under their 
influence ; and he warned his disciples that it was they 
who would seek and accomplish his death. 

When he came to Jerusalem, he pursued toward the 
Pharisees the same uncompromising course. He con- 
fronted them in the temple, and turned upon them per- 
sonally their criticisms of his questionable expositions of 
the law. He told them that the openly vicious, who 
broke away from the divine commands with headlong 
passion, but afterward repented, were more acceptable to 
God than those who professed virtue and were not holy; 
that publicans and harlots went into the kingdom before 
them; and that their rejection of him — the sent Son of 
God — would be followed by their own rejection and de- 

"Matt. xii., j8, 39. ! ' Matt, xii., 43-45. c Matt, xvi., 1-3. 
d Matt, xvi., 4-6. e Matt. xvi., 21. 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 367 

struction." He told them they were the bidden guests to 
the marriage feast, but that not one of them should taste 
of it, and that wayfarers from the hedges would be pre- 
ferred to them. b Finally, in Jerusalem, apparently 
within the precincts of the temple itself, he launches 
against them in the hearing of his disciples the terrible 
invective which is preserved for us in the twenty-third 
chapter of Matthew. The retort of the scribes and Phar- 
isees was the crucifixion. 

The Christian world accepts this chapter as a correct 
delineation of those classes in Judea, which in the first 
century gave character to the Jewish people, and has jus- 
tified itself by the high authority of Jesus for nearly 
twenty centuries of hatred and persecution of the living 
representatives of that people. The history of the 
wrongs and sufferings of the Jewish race has been the 
standing reproach of Christendom. They, who name 
Jesus with reverence and even worship him as Deity 
seem to have forgotten that he ever said : " Love your 
enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that 
curse you, and pray for them that persecute you." But 
they have not forgotten the different spirit which breathes 
through this pitiless chapter, contrasted with which, their 
bitterest hatred seems brotherly forbearance. 

It was enough for the disciples of Pythagoras, to give 
unquestionable authority to any assertion, to say, Ipse 
dixit. A more complete deference to the name of Jesus 
will foreclose the candor of most minds, and except the 
scribes and Pharisees from the scope and regard of his 
own primary canon of personal judgments : He who zvould 
not be himself judged must not judge. 

When Jesus said of the Pharisees that they shut up 
against men , the doors of the kingdom of heaven, the 
reproach is just of them and of their descendants, if it be 
thereby meant, that they did not accept, and have not 
accepted, his claim to be the prophetic Messiah of their 
race. A spirit of that liberal charity that believeth all 
things, in the presence of the fact that these rejectors of 
the Christ had been able to maintain a standard of moral- 
ity and piety quite up to the level of the Christian stand- 
ard, would be ashamed to impute this rejection to any- 

& Matt, xxi., 23-32. *> Luke xiv., 17, 24. c Matt, xxiii., 13. 



368 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

thing but the stress of conscience and reason. When he 
said that the Pharisees made long prayers to cover the 
extortions they practised upon widows," we are surprised, 
that neither the evangelical narratives, nor any other 
contemporary history has given us any details of these 
extortions. We stand appalled, as in the case of the an- 
cient Canaanites, because history has told of their terrible 
punishment, but strangely omitted to gratify our sense of 
justice by telling of their sin. We wonder, too, how, if 
such was, among the believers of the first century, the rep- 
utation of this sect, so enthusiastic a disciple of Jesus as 
Paul should have boasted that he was a Pharisee. When 
Jesus said that the proselytes which the Pharisees were 
so eager to make were, like themselves, children of hell ; b 
that, in paying small tithes, they neglected justice, mercy, 
and faith ; c that they were whited sepulchres, inwardly full 
of all uncleanness ; that they were guilty of the blood of 
the very prophets they quoted and reverenced ; and that 
they were a brood of vipers, who could not escape the 
damnation of hell, — the frightful vehemence of his re- 
proaches do infinitely less honor to the anger that cannot 
suppress them, than to the silent patience that endured 
them. " Ye are the children of them which killed the 
prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers* 
Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers ! how can ye escape 
the damnation of hell?" If this was the first word of 
the new dispensation to the representatives of the old, 
it was not the latest nor the best. Let us turn from this 
spirit that curses, to that which in the magnanimity of its 
fraternal affection and pity tenderly asks to be accursed. 
" For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ 
for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh ; who 
are Israelites ; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the 
glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and 
the service of God." u Let the Christian Church itself 
declare, which of these contrasted spirits is the most 
divine. 

A casual reading of the first two Gospels discloses some 
effect upon the mind of Jesus simultaneous with the 
avowal of his purpose to go to Jerusalem in the ostensible 

a Matt, xxiii., 14. b Matt, xxiii., 15. Matt, xxiii., 23. 
'1 Matt, xxiii., 31-33. e Rom. ix., 3, 4. 






PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 369 

character of the Messiah. The observed change is in the 
general character of his doctrines, and in his own tem- 
per and spirit. Doctrinally, his teaching becomes less 
distinctly ethical. With the exception of the lesson of 
humility taught by the presence of the little child, there 
is uttered after this crisis in his career scarcely a precept 
that is purely moral. Carefully considered, even that 
precept seems to be one of docility and discipleship. 
" Whosoever," he said, " shall humble himself as this 
little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of 
heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child 
in my name, receiveth me ; but whoso shall offend one 
of these little ones which believe in me, it were better 
for him if he were drowned in the sea." a It is not the 
natural simplicity of childhood that Jesus is commend- 
ing, but the disciple, who, with the docility of childhood, 
has believed in him. Faith has taken, in his mind, the 
place of righteousness. 

There had been in the Sermon on the Mount an expo- 
sition of the great judgment of mankind; and, although 
Jesus was himself to be the judge, it was those who had 
done the will of God who were to be approved and re- 
warded. 6 Inasmuch, however, as in the same discourse 
God is characterized as the benign giver of all good 
things, as commending and blessing the upright and the 
pure, and as perfect and unchangeable in his forgiving 
love, the discrimination among the souls of men must 
be considered a discrimination of character. Every 
tree that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down and 
cast into the fire. d Every life not fruitful in good deeds 
is noxious or useless, and is to be cancelled from the sum 
of life. This distinction between the intrinsically good 
and the intrinsically evil harmonized with the funda- 
mental ideas of older religions. 

Just before his arrest, Jesus gave a fuller and more vivid 
representation of the general judgment. "When the 
Son of Man," he said, "shall come in his glory, and all 
the holy angels with him, he shall sit upon the throne of 
his glory; and before him shall be gathered all nations ; 
and he shall separate them as the shepherd divideth his; 

1 Matt, xviii. , 4-6. h Matt, vii., 11. 

cMatt. v., 8, 45; vi., 32, 33. <1 Matt, vii., 19. 



370 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

sheep from the goats." a The sheep, who are accounted 
righteous, and received into everlasting life, are those who 
have rendered services of kindness to the Judge, that is, 
as it is explained, to his disciples. The goats, who are 
esteemed wicked, and sent away into an everlasting pun- 
ishment, are those who have omitted to do services of 
kindness to the Judge, that is, to the least of his disciples. h 
Applying to these declarations of Jesus the conven- 
tional methods of interpretation, — recasting them in the 
larger mould of modern humanitarian sentiment, — we may 
be able to find that the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned, 
relieved or neglected by the elect and the non-elect, repre- 
sent the suffering classes of the world. Thus explained, 
the discrimination is not based on creeds or upon con- 
formity to arbitrary conditions of salvation, but is between 
men who do acts of charity spontaneously, and those who 
take no heed of the great aggregate of suffering they 
never think of relieving. Thus improved and enlarged, the 
lesson becomes one of the noblest ever taught under the 
authority of the great teacher. It is Jesus putting him- 
self in the place of men — feeling that their sickness, im- 
prisonment, poverty, and suffering are his own — reward- 
ing those who had relieved, and disowning those who had 
neglected them. But did he thus interpret himself ? Who 
are "these my brethren," and "the least of these," whose 
benefits and injuries are remembered in the final separa- 
tion of the nations of mankind ? It is not difficult to 
learn the sense in which characteristic expressions were 
used by Jesus. It is nowhere found in the Synoptic Gos- 
pels that he applied the term my brethren to ordinary men. 
On the contrary, he expressly disclaimed the relationship 
toward his own natural kindred. " They are my breth- 
ren" he said, "who hear the word of God, and do it." c 
" Call no man," he enjoined, "your father upon the earth ; 
for one is your Father, which is in heaven." d The injunc- 
tion applies by stronger reasons to subordinate relation- 
ships. The whole stress of the later exhortations of 
Jesus bears upon discipleship. All his precepts, the 
moral of all his parables, seem designed to incite accept- 
ance of his Messianic mission, and constancy and fidelity 
of personal allegiance. The judgment of the great sepa- 

» Matt, xxv., 31, 32. •> Matt, xxv., 34-46. c Luke viii., 21. dMatt. xxiii., 9. 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 371 

ration reaffirms what he had said before. It was not 
whosoever shall give — be it only a cup of water — to the 
thirsty, but " whosoever shall give a cup of water to you, 
because ye belong to Christ, shall not lose his reward." a 
Not he that shall injure a man, but he that "shall offend 
one of these little ones which believe in me" had better be 
cast into the sea with a millstone about his neck. b " All 
the tribes of the earth," foreboding their impending 
doom, "would mourn, when they should see the Son of 
Man coming in the clouds of heaven. " c Only "the little 
flock " to whom it was their " Father's good pleasure to 
give the kingdom" were to be without fear at its coming. d 
It seems scarcely capable of question that those char- 
acteristic designations of Jesus, "my disciples," "my 
brethren" "the little flock" "these little ones" "the least 
of these," are terms of restricted application to those who 
believed in him. 

This tender regard for those who had given in their 
adhesion to him is in striking contrast to his indifference 
toward those who failed to recognize him and who 
opposed him, — an indifference that strengthened in his 
last days into alienation and reprobation. The reader 
must pardon the repeated marshalling of the same texts 
to illustrate the different traits of the character of Jesus. 
It is made necessary by the meagre memoranda tradition 
has given us of his words, and by the requirements of 
presentation in detail of his opinions and sentiments. 
Sending out his twelve disciples to do cures and proclaim 
the kingdom of heaven, he said : " Behold, I send you 
forth as sheep in the midst of wolves." "Beware," he 
warned them, "of men." They will deliver you up unto 
councils to be scourged in their synagogues ; but it shall 
be a testimony against your countrymen and the Gen- 
tiles. 6 Men, common men, what in modern phrase are 
called the masses, were the enemies, whose hostility he 
dreaded. The Son of Man, he once said, " is delivered into 
the hands of men; and they shall kill him." f The people 
were not the intelligent and virtuous constituency whom 
it is the fashion of modern courtesy to flatter. They were 
the wolves who would ravage his tender fold, and into 
whose merciless claws he himself would fall at last. 

"Mark ix., 4:. bMatt. xviii., 6. cMatt. xxiv., 30. <1 Luke xii., 33. 
•Matt, x., 1, 16-25. fMarkix.,31. 



372 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESl\- 

It has been seen that, when Jesus was pressed by the 
multitudes, he avoided them and went up to a mountain ; 
and that, sitting down there, his disciples came to him 
and he taught them. It was his disciples that he pro- 
nounced blessed and the heirs of the kingdom." It was 
his little flock the hairs of whose heads were numbered. 1 " 
It was his elect who could ask whatsoever they would of 
his heavenly Father, and it would be given to them. c 
But, when the multitudes came, he perplexed them with 
parables that even his familiar friends could not under- 
stand. And so they asked him why he did so, and he 
frankly gave this answer : It is lawful for you to know 
the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven ; it is not lawful 
for them. I speak unto them in parables, because, with 
eyes, they do not see, and with ears they do not hear; lest 
they should see and hear, and so be converted and healed. d 
In describing the calamities that should precede his 
coming in his kingdom, he told his disciples that, for 
his elect's sake — involved in the suffering — those evil 
days should be shortened. 6 No consideration for the 
mass of mankind was at all relevant. They were of no 
account. Only the elect stand in the estimation of God. 

Toward the people of the heathen nations, his attitude 
was still more unsympathetic. I am sent to the lost 
sheep of the house of Israel. It is not proper to take 
the children's bread and cast it to dogs. f The heathen 
represented those outside of the pale of his sympathy and 
thought. For, he said, the offending disciple was to be 
first privately admonished of his fault, then reproved by 
two or three brethren, then solemnly warned by the whole 
assembly of believers. But, if he remained obstinate in 
his wickedness, he was to be like a heathen man and 
a publican, which was for him a condition representative 
of utter excommunication and separation/ Nothing could 
so completely indicate how the people of the world lay out 
of the scope of his regard, as what he once said to his dis- 
ciples, — if ye love them, that love you, the heathen — or, as 
Luke tells it, using what to him was a synonym, sinners — 
also love those that love them. 1 ' The heathen sinners do 
good to those that do good to them. It is a small thing 

a Matt, v., 2, 3. b Matt, x., 30. c Matt, xxi., 22. d Matt, xiii., 10-16 
eMatt. xxiv., 22. f Matt xv., 24, 26. B Matt, xviii., 15-18. h Luke vi., 32, 33. 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 373 

to equal the morality of the heathen : yours must surpass 
that of scribes and Pharisees. All the ordinary employ- 
ments of worldly men were to Jesus impious. As it was 
in the days of Noah, they ate, they drank, they married 
wives, until the flood came and destroyed them all ; as it 
was in the days of Lot, they ate, they drank, they bought, 
they sold, they planted, they builded, till the rain of fire 
and brimstone destroyed them, — so, he said, will I come 
bringing like destruction to worldly men, busied with their 
worldly avocations." That broad humanitarian spirit which 
has modified the severity of codes, and given gentleness to 
manners ; which recognizes in alien faiths, for which men 
would once have been crucified or burned, the product of 
a religious sentiment as universal as conscience, — can only 
be considered the fruitage of Christianity, as Christianity 
has idealized Christ. . It has presumed to extend the char- 
ity of Jesus to those to whom he was himself hostile or 
indifferent. 

In the Acts of the Apostles is found a fragment of 
Peter's exhortation to the centurion Cornelius, in which 
he thus speaks of Jesus: "God anointed Jesus of Naza- 
reth with the Holy Ghost and with power ; who went 
about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed 
with the devil : for God was with him." b If this fragment 
could be taken as the recollection of a personal friend, it 
would be testimony of the greatest weight. The known 
literary habits of Paul, the fact that disciples, used to 
writing, accompanied his missions, who would gladly have 
made notes of his speeches, gives us much confidence, that 
the reports are the substance at least of his addresses. 
What is imputed to Peter and the "unlearned" apostles 
is more likely to be the dramatic form, in which the nar- 
rator undertook to set forth arguments, generally known 
to the receivers of the new faith. But, whether Peter's 
or the author's, this language fairly represents the view, 
which the early Church took of the character and work 
of Jesus. The only miraculous power specified — that 
good which Jesus, went about to do — was the relieving 
of men from the infestation of malign spirits. 

In the apostolic writings, of whose genuineness there 
is a more reasonable assurance, the benevolence of Jesus 

a Luke xvii., 26-30. b Acts x., 38. 



374 OPINION'S AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

is affirmed upon still more recondite and questionable 
reasons. They speak not so much of the friend and 
master, whose companionship they had enjoyed, or of 
the Galilean teacher and prophet, whose acts and words 
are told in the Synoptic Gospels, as of Jesus the Christ, a 
typical and prophetic personage. Peter in his Epistle, 
when he wishes to appeal to the example of his Master, 
gives us no picture of his human life in Galilee or in Je- 
rusalem, no anecdotes or personal traits, that an affection- 
ate memory could not suppress, but — reverting to a 
prophecy of Isaiah — thus describes him: "Who did no 
sin, neither was guile found in his mouth ; who, when he 
was reviled, reviled not again ; when he suffered, he 
threatened not, but committed himself to Him that judgeth 
righteously." Comparing this language with the ancient 
prophecy, we find that, as it is inaccurate in substance as 
well as form as a quotation, it is more manifestly inapt 
as a personal description. When the scribes and Phari- 
sees made vile accusations against him, he vigorously 
retorted and called them hypocrites, blind leaders of the 
blind, a wicked and adulterous generation ; and, when he 
was about to suffer at the hands of the priesthood, he 
pronounced against them a doom that should involve 
their city and the whole generation. 

But the view which the apostolic writings more fre- 
quently present of the benevolence of Jesus is a view of 
a divine being, equal with God, dwelling in the bliss of an 
immortal life, who so loved the world that he consented 
to put off this glory and become a man and a servant, and 
be subject to death, that the world might be saved by 
believing on him. This is the view invariably presented 
in Paul's writings, and in those imputed to the other 
apostles ; and, when they hold up the benevolence of 
Jesus as an example, it is this grand and divine sacrifice 
and condescension, rather than acts of human charity and 
mercy, that his followers are exhorted to imitate. 

A rational, not to say a reverent, criticism must turn 
alike from such prophetic and providential contemplation 
of Jesus to his human life as history has disclosed it. 
We certainly cannot enter into or measure a purely 
divine personality, nor admit among the beneficences of 
any human life, however grandly endowed, its condescen- 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 375 

sion in consenting to be born. Whatever Jesus was or 
is, when he became a man, he took upon him the condi- 
tions of humanity, and complete amenability to all legiti- 
mate judgments of human conduct. 

Leaving out of view, as we must, that office in the 
divine economy, which may have brought Jesus from a 
pre-existent glory to an exceptionally wretched human 
lot, what estimate of his benevolence is justly due to what 
is known of his life ? All the traditions represent him 
as going through his native province healing cases of 
chronic disease, mostly those disorders which disturb the 
normal operations of the mind, and which in his time were 
considered to be caused by demoniac possession. In a 
character as nearly faultless as that of Jesus,' the senti- 
ment of pity is quick and strong. But for what these 
traditions assert, we should conclude that these curative 
works were prompted by genuine and natural pity, and 
gave the doer of them an eminent rank among the great 
benefactors of the world. Of a person, who was endowed 
with abnormal capacities to cure madness, blindness, pa- 
ralysis, and other forms of painful and disabling maladies, 
by a touch, by a word, by the mere virtue of his presence, 
the world would require a large activity of service. If it 
be lawful at all to interrupt the retributions appointed in 
pain and death for all violations of natural laws, it is hard 
in a world full of misery and disease to set any limit to 
the responsibility of a person thus gifted less narrow than 
the gauge of the aggregate of misery and disease. We 
should hold one, who by a word could relieve the disorders 
of mankind, and who failed to speak it, guilty of their 
perpetuation. It does not either seem just to compare 
efforts, to lessen the complicated wretchedness of the 
world, that cost so little, with those long vigils, those 
costly months and years of help and care, of nourishment 
and sympathy, which — for the very reason that we cannot 
by our words or prayers bring instant health to the sick — 
we cheerfully render to mitigate their sufferings. We 
cannot give the same value to these local and transient 
exhibitions of thaumaturgic skill told in the annals of many 
people, as to organized institutions of charity established 
by the best governments, and under the most enlightened 
social arrangements, supported by a regularity of giving, 



376 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

or by a munificence of endowment, that makes them as 
permanent as the diseases they help to relieve. 

Let us look again at the traditions of the career of 
Jesus, and see what they assert in reference to his gifts 
of healing. Whatever beneficent works he wrought 
among his countrymen, he himself avows to have been 
done somewhat capriciously, and not so much from pity 
for the suffering, as to produce a certain opinion among 
spectators favorable to himself. Thus he avowed that he 
was not sent to cure insane persons who were Phoeni- 
cians, though he consented to make an exception in be- 
half of a woman, who accosted him with great courtesy 
and tact. He declared not only that he would not, but 
could not, do cures upon persons who had no faith, nor in 
cities where the public sentiment was decidedly adverse 
to him, nor in Judea and Jerusalem, where an obdurate 
scepticism possessed the leading classes in society. 

But Jesus as the loving heart of man has cherished 
him, the fearless martyr braving the terrors of a' cruel 
death, the patient sufferer silently bearing the scoffs of 
wicked men, the pitying man quickly responsive to every 
form of human suffering, more than all, the sublime 
prophet proclaiming the glories of an everlasting life, has 
been a minister of comfort, of consolation, of courage, 
and of hope, and has become the spiritual benefactor 
of all devout souls. Less distinct are the traces of his 
beneficence in the real world of suffering and of sin than 
in the ideal world of faith and aspiration. 

As we have found the dominant idea of Jesus illus- 
trating and rendering consistent much that was in itself 
unintelligible in his ethical system, so will it be found to 
throw some light upon the exposition of his character. 
We have seen how gradually and reluctantly he surren- 
dered himself to the loftiest ambition that ever inspired 
the human mind. What wonder that, with its advent, 
came the dawning of a self-consciousness which affected 
disastrously the symmetry of a soul naturally modest and 
self-contained. Human infirmity, expanding under the 
influence of a great enthusiasm to divine capacities, be- 
trays its mortal birth in hours of despair, oftener perhaps 
in hours of exultation over success. When a man begins 
to ask, What do men think of me ? his spiritual integrity 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 377 

has not been maintained, and the staff of his achievement 
is broken. That such a crisis came to Mohammed is 
plain to us, who are not the captives of .his faith, though 
after it came converts, conquests, and the empire of half 
the world. We see how that crisis separates the devout- 
ness, the gentleness, the fidelity, and the chastity of his 
blameless youth from the arrogance, the ambition, the 
ferocity, and the sensuality of his old age. Certain it is 
that a line drawn midway in the career of Jesus — per- 
haps at the memorable conference with his disciples at 
Caesarea Philippi — leaves nearly all of his meekness, his 
pitifulness, and his self-control, as well as his wisest and 
most consolatory counsels to mankind, on one side, and 
upon the other side his self-assertion, his petulance, 
and his uncharitableness, along with those sombre vatici- 
nations of impending doom by which ignorance and fanati- 
cism have ever since harrowed the apprehensions of the 
superstitious. 

Not the scribes and Pharisees only became the subject 
of his reproaches. Into the bosom of his own little flock, 
upon the head of Peter, whom he had honored with a 
burst of sublime confidence, and a largess of power 
enough to disturb a cooler head, he hurled the cruel epi- 
thet, Satan. When he came down from the mountain, 
where he had seen a vision of Moses and Elias, he called 
the multitude, who beset him with tearful prayers for his 
intervention, a wicked and adulterous race, whose presence 
he could scarcely endure, — unless, indeed, this reproach 
was for the faithlessness of his own disciples. Travelling 
to Jerusalem, he was hungry, and sought a fig-tree full of 
leaves for fruit. Mark is ingenuous enough to explain 
that it was not the season of figs ; and he must be correct, 
since it was before the arrest and before the Passover, 
which occurred in April ; and the fig in Palestine could 
hardly ripen earlier than June. But it is told that Jesus 
uttered an imprecation against the tree that had refused, 
out of the season, to supply his wants. It was near the 
same time that Jesus, in forgetfulness of his lessons of 
peace, ordered his followers to arm themselves with 
swords. These incidents are sufficient to show how he 
could not quite assure the serenity of his own spirit, in 
spite of the bravery with which he coerced his soul to 



378 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

endure the fate that befell his high mission, without 
imputing to him the undignified and petulant demeanor 
which the Fourth Gospel reports as characterizing his 
bearing before Pilate. 

Jesus did not come back, as he confidently expected, to 
establish in the lifetime of his generation his kingdom of 
heaven. The hope he cherished, like the hope his nation 
cherished, has been indefinitely postponed. Magnificent 
as was the scheme to accomplish which he gave his life, 
the thoughts of God seem to have been larger and longer. 
But yet, if not as the Jews longed for it, nor yet as Jesus 
and Peter and Paul proclaimed it, there is for all believing 
souls a kingdom of heaven ; and it is at hand. It comes 
with every achievement of genius and art, with every in- 
vention that enlarges man's dominion over his environ- 
ment, with the disclosure of every new law that indicates 
the unity, the vitality, and the divine order of the cosmos, 
with every new moral power which man, by conforming 
to the sentiment of duty, has been able to add to the 
stock of his transmissible virtues. 

Jesus did not come back to destroy the world. Hap- 
pily, he had done not a little to make the world worth 
perpetuation. The old lessons of virtue, already accred- 
ited as the moral science of all civilized people, he reiter- 
ated and emphasized. He cast them like seed into the 
hearts of men, after they had been made tender and sus- 
ceptible by the terrors of impending judgment and retri- 
bution. The terrors have passed away, but not till, in the 
warmth radiated from the fires of a freshly opened Ge- 
henna, the good seed had germinated, and begun to grow 
toward an abundant harvest. 

Nor need the crown even of this kingdom be refused 
to Jesus. Best of all who have yet lived in the world, he 
is worthy to wear it. Spite of the insignificant blem- 
ishes by which his relationship to us is confessed, he still 
leads the van in the march of man from the plain of 
bestial instincts to the high table-lands of spiritual dis- 
cernment and power. By his purity, by the heroism of 
his self-consecration to the noblest aims, by the dazzling 
splendor of that standard of righteousness which he por- 
trayed and exemplified, he is as yet enthroned King of 
humanity. 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 379 

It is rare that a great organizing mind affects the 
world precisely as it intends, or does the precise work it 
conceives and proposes. The secondary effects of great 
lives become often more consequential than the primary 
and immediate effects. Columbus did not find, as he all 
his life believed, a new route to India ; but he found a new 
world. Europe, united in arms, failed to establish a Chris- 
tian kingdom in Judea ; but it did establish in Europe a 
Christian civilization destined to conquer the whole world. 
If Jesus did not establish his kingdom of heaven in Zion, 
he became the inspirer of a new religion. 

Man does not live by bread alone, — by that which min- 
isters to his health, wealth, or power. He lives chiefly 
by his ideals. Religion, with the awful solemnities of its 
worship, with its stately pageantry of deathless gods, with 
the invitations and repulsions of its heavens and of its 
hells, is the verity and substance of the life of man's 
spirit. So the world has honored and worshipped those 
prophets and saviors who have enriched it with the 
hopes, and reinforced it with the motives of a new religion. 
A man's religion is a higher and better expression of him 
than is his poetry, his science, or his art. 

Nor is a religion always the best and the purest at its 
inception. Of all the great religions, whose history we 
know, the reverse is true. When a faith, that has been 
the cultus of races and generations of men, ceases to 
express the highest aspirations of the soul, when its 
dogmas affront our reason, and its standards of righteous- 
ness outrage our moral sense, when the tawdry vesture of 
its mythology provokes more mirth than terror, it de- 
mands and receives some worthier interpretation. Stated 
in terms of a just and liberal thought, it revives and sur- 
vives, and becomes the support and sustenance of genera- 
tions. The time however comes at last, when the old 
garment can no longer be patched with new cloth, when 
the new wine bursts the old bottles. For the critical 
faculty grows with the creative imagination ; and where the 
continuity and identity between an idealized image and a 
historical verity are at last broken, the time is ripe for a 
new Messiah. 

Contrasting Jesus with the founders of the other great 
world-religions, \vc may be able to approximate toward 



380 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

his just place in human history. Moses, Confucius, 
Sakya Muni, and Mohammed were all men of affairs. 
They had experience in domestic life as husbands and 
fathers ; in civil offices they had the responsibilities of 
subjects and of rulers, in military service of leaders or 
soldiers ; and they rounded to its completion a human life 
rich in all the discipline and wisdom which comes with 
manifold activity in conspicuous and responsible positions. 
In Jesus, we have a long youth of utter obscurity in a 
corner of the Old World, doubtless passed in those self- 
musings which expose to egotistic enthusiasms ; a fastidi- 
ous shrinking from those domestic relations out of which 
grow so many of the human affections, and which furnish 
the chief occasions for that self-sacrifice which is the 
foundation of all virtues ; an utter distrust of all the 
social and political experience of men, and an impatience 
of those slow ameliorations of the evils of the world 
which come from a better ordered state. Last of all, the 
career of Jesus was too brief — perhaps less than a year 
from the time he abandoned his artisan life in Nazareth 
till the whole brilliant pageant was eclipsed in the dark- 
ness and terror of Calvary — to be either a comprehen- 
sive experience, out of which to instruct the teeming 
races of men, or to be a fair test of his personal integrity 
or a measure of his greatness. 

Of the great world-religions, those of the Jews, of the 
Greeks, and of the Chinese, have been specifically prac- 
tical and secular. Moses originated a cultus, theistic in- 
deed, but most completely outward, worldly, and adapted 
to men, as men ; that took the fullest account of all the 
human instincts, the love of life, the love of the sexes, 
the love of offspring, the tribal sentiments, the thirst 
for aggression and conquest, and the passion for pos- 
sessions. Confucius gave a cultus as thoroughly human, 
and adapted to the development of a great nation, — a 
rule of life, whereby the most stable government and the 
most permanent social order have been maintained for 
more than a thousand years, — but atheistic in its basis, 
and appealing as little as Judaism to the imagination. 
Christianity, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism are essen- 
tially other-worldly religions. They are all based more 
or less upon a sacrifice of the earthly life in the interest 



PERSONAL PRETENSIONS OF JESUS 381 

of a life to come after death. It shows how dominant 
over the mind of man are the ideals of his imagination, 
that these great religions, which more than others feed 
the aspirations of his soul, have supplanted and outlasted 
those religions that have taken solid hold of human life, 
and most wisely adapted themselves to the social, polit- 
ical, and industrial conditions of man's present existence. 



CHAPTER XII. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION. 

" To the mind of Jesus, his own resurrection after a short sojourn in the 
grave was the victory of his cause after his death, and at the price of his 
death. His disciples materialized his resurrection, and their version of this 
matter falls to ruin day by day. But no ruin or contradiction befalls the 
version of Jesus himself. He has risen ; his cause has conquered ; the 
course of events continually attests his resurrection and victory." — Matthew 
Arnold. 

" If at first it sprang out of a local miracle, and may have been little 
distinguished from other waves of feeling that were propagated by the 
religious guilds of the ancient world, Christianity is not now identical with 
belief in the resurrection of Jesus. It is now, and has for fifteen centuries 
been, something wholly different ; namely, the great bond holding the 
European races and their off-shoots together in that sort of union out of 
which naturally springs a common polity. True it may be that the miracle 
was the essential fact, without which the union would never have been 
accomplished : there may have been a time when it was true that ' if Christ 
be not risen, our faith is vain ' ; but when the union has taken place, has 
endured for a thousand years, and though since weakened and endangered 
yet subsists in the form of an indestructible common civilization and sense 
of unity among nations, it is no longer true. The Christian Church is now 
the visible expression of a true cosmopolitanism, which will be eternal ; and, 
this being so, it avails nothing henceforth against it to argue that, after all, 
Christ is not risen." — Natural Religion. 

Of all the supernatural events which tradition has 
imputed to the agency of Jesus, or to the divine power 
which he was able to invoke, no one is so well vouched by 
respectable testimony as the resurrection. The whole 
Christian Church, and ultimately the whole Christian 
world, with an insignificant amount of dissent, came to 
believe and still believe, that, a day or two after his death 
and burial, his sepulchred body disappeared ; and that on 
several occasions, separated by intervals of a week's 
duration, he showed himself alive to some of his disciples, 
and fully established his identity by characteristic words 
and actions, and by exhibiting in his hands and side the 
fresh wounds left by the crucifixion. When we compare 
the accumulation and general concurrence of the testi- 
mony, upon which the belief in the actual occurrence of 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 383 

this marvel rests, with the paucity and levity of evidence 
which support the other evangelical miracles ; when we 
consider the significant silence of the witnesses who 
ignore and omit them, it seems just to conclude, that, if 
the credibility of the resurrection was to be determined 
by merely counting and weighing the supporting testi- 
mony, we have tenfold more reason for believing it than 
we have for believing that Jesus walked on the sea, made 
of five loaves and two fishes an abundant feast for five thou- 
sand people, raised from his bier the dead son of a widow 
at Nain, or cured by a touch in the purlieus of the temple 
at Jerusalem a man who had been born blind. One who 
should reject as unproved the tradition of such miracles 
might find his faith coerced by the accumulation of testi- 
mony upon which the resurrection is asserted ; but one 
who, on a critical examination, had come to reject the 
dogma of the resurrection, could not give a very convinc- 
ing reason for continued faith in any of the other events 
outside of the range of the natural order, that are asserted 
to have made the life of Jesus unique and abnormal. 

The raising of the widow's son is told only in the narra- 
tive of Luke, and the curing of the blind man in the tem- 
ple is an incident introduced among the evident fictions of 
the dogmatic drama of the Fourth Gospel. If real occur- 
rences, they were too consequential and conspicuous to be 
omitted in the tradition of Matthew. The wonderful en- 
largement of the food — the recitation of which in all four 
of the narratives makes it evident that the omission of 
what other writers had told, and the telling of what they 
had omitted, was not the controlling purpose that dictated 
the composition of either of the Gospels — is not supported 
by the confirmation of Paul or of either of the apostles. 
The omission of all allusion to the miracles in the authen- 
tic and imputed writings of Paul is not only pregnant as a 
negation, but the theory that he carefully and always 
insists upon, that Jesus' earthly life was not the triumphal 
career of a god, or the awe-inspiring manifestation of a 
hierophant, but the ignominious subjection of one submit- 
ting to service and shame, for the glory that was to come 
after his resurrection, — a r61e entirely incompatible with 
miraculous powers, — made it illogical for him to believe 
in the miracles imputed to Jesus. But the resurrection of 



384 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Jesus is, as to the substantial fact, asserted by all four of 
the gospel writers. It is declared in the genuine Epistles 
of Paul, nay, made the very basis of his whole scheme of 
metaphysics and theology. The affirmation of it is im- 
puted to Peter and James and John, as well as to Paul, in 
their reported speeches, which the writer of the Book of 
Acts undertakes to preserve, and in epistles believed to 
have been written or dictated by them. It was the best 
known dogma of the Christian creed, the novelty and 
peculiarity, by which its scheme of doctrine was distin- 
guished among the heathen from all contemporaneous and 
antecedent faiths. 

Before we institute an inquiry into the actuality of the 
resurrection, let us consider precisely what the assertion 
is, to which our assent is invited. A careful study of the 
tradition, as preserved in the New Testament literature, 
shows that the early believers were not in accord about 
it. We discover two distinct explanations of the resur- 
rection not reconcilable with each other. The opinion 
held by the mass of the disciples was that set forth in the 
four Gospels, and in the statement of which they substan- 
tially agree. Let us endeavor to apprehend it. 

The body of the crucified Jesus, which Joseph of Arima- 
thea had procured to be delivered to him, he had carefully 
entombed in a new sepulchre, the door of which was barri- 
caded by a large stone. The corpse thus carefully depos- 
ited and secured was also guarded, at least for two days, 
by soldiers. After an interval of thirty-six hours at most, 
a few devoted women — among them the mother of Jesus 
— find the stone rolled back, the body gone, though 
the cerements in which it had been wound are left in the 
empty tomb. These women report to Peter and the 
other apostles, not that Jesus is alive, — though even this 
they begin to believe, — but that his body is not to be 
found in the place where, under such safeguards, it had 
been deposited. Peter and the disciples — as if that was 
the surest test of the startling hope the words of the 
women first awakened in their minds — proceed, actually 
running in their excitement, to the tomb. If the body is 
still there, the women have deceived them. But it is not 
there, and immediately they abandon themselves to the 
joyful assurance, that their Master has come back to life. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 385 

It was the body the women went to see. It was the 
absence of the body, that gave them their first vague 
impression that he was alive. It was the body, that Peter 
and John went to the tomb to identify ; and, not finding 
it, they were ready to receive other evidence, that it has 
again come to life. The words spoken all relate to the 
corpse. " They have taken away my Lord'' that is, his 
remains, "and I know not where they have laid him," 
moaned the affectionate Mary of Magdala. a "He," that 
is, his body, "is not here" said angelic voices. "He" 
that is, the body of Jesus taking back its life, " is risen, 
as he said. He goetlt before yon into Galilee : there shall 
ye see Jrim."* 

There were voices and angelic appearances, but as to 
these the witnesses lamentably differ. It was one angel, 
say some ; it was two angels, say others. They stood out- 
side the tomb ; nay, they sat within the tomb. There were 
no angels ; and Jesus, instead of being away in Galilee, and 
first and only seen there, was all the time in Jerusalem — 
never went to Galilee at all — and stood by the side of his 
own tomb in the guise of a gardener, and spake to Mary, 
who recognized and worshipped him. Communications 
are reported to Mary, to Peter, to the assembled disciples ; 
but the accounts differ in both form and substance as to 
what these communications were, and by whom and to 
whom they were delivered. Only as to one thing is 
there entire accord, and that is that the corpse of the 
crucified was not to be found in the place, whence it was 
supposed only supernatural power could remove it. The 
two disciples walking, on that Sunday afternoon after the 
crucifixion, to Emmaus tell their unknown companion, 
that before they left Jerusalem the same morning certain 
women of their company made them astonished by report- 
ing that, being early at the sepulchre, they found not the 
body of Jesus, and that they had seen a vision of angels, 
which said he was alive. 

To a modern believer in the immortality of man, the 
hope that his deceased friend still lives is in no way con- 
tradicted or lessened by the discovery of his decaying 
body just where it had been reverently deposited. The 
belief in the continuous life of the soul takes no account 

a fohn xx., 13. l>Matt. xxviii., 6, 7. 



$86 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

of the presence and decomposition of what was once its 
physical organism. But to all the evangelists, and to the 
disciples of Jesus, according to the evangelical records, 
Jesus could not be alive in Jerusalem or in Galilee and at 
the same time buried in a new tomb near the place of his 
crucifixion. So, with pertinacity and unanimity, they 
insist on what to us seems in no wise an essential cir- 
cumstance, the absence of the body from the tomb, while 
they are not careful to agree, and do not agree, as to any 
of the substantial details of the resurrection itself. 

What the resuscitated Jesus seems in all the narratives 
to have insisted upon was, that he was not a ghost, but a 
veritable body with bodily appetite more keen and gross 
than even in his lifetime, and with the physical marks 
left on his person by the cruelties of his putting-to-death. 
The controversialists, to complete the discomfiture of Paul 
and the rationalists of his school, put into the mouth of 
the resurrected Christ himself this declaration: "Behold 
my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle vie, and 
see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me 
have."* Even the author of the Johannic drama, from 
whose generally exalted and spiritual conception of the 
personality of Jesus a better opinion might have been 
expected, gives the weight of his testimony to perpetuate 
a gross superstition, which, chiefly on his authority, has 
survived to the present day. For this author too por- 
trays Jesus in a resurrection, whose chief glory seemed to 
be in the consciousness of a restored physique, and in the 
possession of an appetite demanding an anticipation of the 
hour of dining. b Written, as this production is believed 
to have been, about a century after Paul's letter to the 
Corinthians, it shows conclusively how completely, even in 
the minds of the more philosophic and mystic believers, 
the theory of a physical resurrection had supplanted the 
more just and credible conception of Paul. 

What was this conception ? It is all disclosed in the 
famous fifteenth chapter of the first letter of that apostle 
to the Corinthians in these words : " For I delivered unto 
you, first of all, that which I also received, how that 
Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures ; and 
that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day 

a Luke xxiv., 39. >' John xx., 27 ; xxi., 4, 5, 10,12,13. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 387 

according to the scriptures ; and that he was seen of 
Peter, then of the twelve ; after that, he was seen of 
above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater 
part still survive. After that, he was seen of James, then 
of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me 
also." a Now, thus far we find nothing directly negativing 
the theory of a physical resurrection, and the reanimation 
of the crucified body of Jesus ; and, were this Paul's 
whole testimony, it might be our duty to reconcile it with 
the prevalent tradition of the early Church. For each of 
these alleged appearances of Jesus may have been the 
appearance of a body with flesh and bones, demonstrating 
and asserting that it was no ghost. But of the last of 
these appearances — all classed together as similar in 
kind — we know somewhat, and that, too, upon the best 
authority, — that of Paul himself; and we cannot regard 
it as anything more than an apparition. 

In Paul's letters, we come upon the questionable and 
doubtful relation in which he lived and taught toward 
those who, at Jerusalem, were considered the pillars of 
the Church. We learn how sharply and passionately the 
very fundamental ideas of his theology were gainsaid and 
contradicted by apostles who, through their more intimate 
connection with Jesus in his lifetime, were justly held in 
higher repute than himself. b We know how his preten- 
sion to be an apostle was scouted, and how his whole 
story of an appointment by Jesus himself on the road to 
Damascus was regarded as a fanatical delusion. It was 
perhaps with a view of taking from under him the foun- 
dation of his apostleship, that the tradition of the Gospels 
was carefully fixed, limiting, by the authority of Jesus 
himself, the number of the apostles to twelve, and filling, 
under the sanction of the Holy Ghost, the vacancy made 
by the falling off of Judas, not by Paul, but by Matthias. 

A like disposition to check the presumption of a false 
apostle is further manifested in the account the real 
apostles seemed to have sanctioned of Jesus' ascension 
to heaven. It is told in the Acts of the Apostles that, 
after showing himself in bodily shape for a space of 
forty days, Jesus went out into the suburbs of Jerusalem 

M. Cor. xv., 3-8. MI. Cor. x., xi., xii. ; C.al. i., ii. 

<^ Matt, x , 2-5 ; Actsi., 17, 21-26. 



388 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

with a concourse of his disciples, and there in a most con- 
spicuous way was parted from them, and taken up to 
heaven, and that two angels appeared, as they watched 
his ascension. to the sky, that received him, and said: 
" This same Jesus, who is taken up from yon into heaven, 
shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into 
heaven" a That is, forty days after the resurrection the 
showing of Jesus to his friends definitively ceased; and 
it was announced authoritatively from heaven that, when 
he came again, it would be his final coming, as he 
had foretold, to end the world. After this, no apostle, 
no orthodox disciple, sees Jesus. They have visions, 
they hear voices, the communication with the upper 
world is frequent and intimate ; but Jesus is no longer 
the medium. It is always the Holy Ghost or an angel 
of God. The Johannic narrative — on this point plainly 
anti-Pauline, and in the orthodox interest — brings its 
emphatic disapproval of Paul's interviews with Jesus, 
who, during the brief interval that was to separate the 
ascension from the final coming, was not to be seen nor 
to have his privacy with the Deity intruded upon. For 
it puts into the mouth of Jesus himself the declaration : 
" If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you. 
But, if I depart, I will se?id him unto you" " A little 
while, and ye shall not see me." h 

The consideration is not here disregarded that an actual 
absence of the glorified and resurrected body of Jesus in 
the paradise of God was not inconsistent with an appar- 
ition of Jesus to Paul. The common faith is, that appar- 
itions are only of those who have departed from earth ; 
and the sight of an apparition of an absent friend brings 
terror to the common mind, because it is a token of his 
death. But it is by no means probable that this distinc- 
tion between a ghost — which in scientific parlance is a 
strong subjective impression upon a highly sensitive 
organization, not necessarily implying any objective real- 
ity — and the actual presence of one who has died clothed 
with an immortal though physical body was a distinction 
that entered into the minds of the New Testament 
writers, or into the mind of Paul himself. To them there 
were two states in which human beings might exist — as 

aActsi., II. b John xiv., 26; xvi., 7, 16. 






LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 389 

mortals before death, as immortals after death ; but, in 
both states, they had material bodies with senses and ap- 
petites. So that when the Church at Jerusalem estab- 
lished as a canon of faith, that Jesus with a glorified 
human body had passed into the heavens to remain there 
till his final coming, they made it impossible for Paul on 
his way to Damascus to have seen Jesus after his ascen- 
sion and before his final coming, in any form in which 
they could conceive it possible for him really to appear. 

But Paul's testimony must be taken altogether; and, so 
taking it, the conception of the resurrection of Jesus, 
which he held, is still more irreconcilable with the tenet 
of the primitive Church, and with the tradition preserved 
in the canonical Gospels. The heat, not to say ill man- 
ners, with which the apostle expresses himself, indi- 
cates precisely where he treads upon controversial 
ground. But some will say, How are the dead raised tip, 
and with what body do they come ? Fool ! that which thou 
sowest is not made alive, till it hath first died: tJtou sow- 
est not the plant that is to be, but otily the seed of it, as of 
wheat, or some other grain, and God givetJi it a body as 
pleases him ; for there are kinds of bodies, as of men, beasts, 
birds, and of fishes ; so earthly and heavenly bodies, natural 
and spiritual bodies. And when you sow the natural body 
corruptible, as a seed, it is in the power of God to raise from 
it a spiritual body incorruptible." Paul had been evidently 
provoked by the gross beliefs of his fellow-disciples. He 
had heard, to the point of personal disgust, the stories, 
that afterward embodied themselves in the gospel narra- 
tives, of Jesus coming into the assemblies of his chosen 
friends to exhibit the wounds on his person, to vindicate 
his appetite, and to assert that he was something to be 
handled, and no apparition ; and he cannot refrain from 
flinging at the whole company, high and low, who were 
retailing these stories, and getting them believed in spite 
of his protest, the uncourteous epithet, fool. 

Nor is it of consequence that the illustration of vege- 
table growth breaks down wholly under a better knowl- 
edge than Paul possessed of the process of reproduction. 
He starts with the emphatic assertion, The old body, what 
is that but the seed of quite a different kind of a body ? 



390 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

So far from the old body living again, the living again is 
not possible "except it die." The reverse happens to be. 
true. Reproduction is not possible in the case of " wheat 
or of some other grain " except the seed is alive and keeps 
alive; and, if it is dead when planted, or dies in the 
ground, germination becomes impossible. But no matter. 
It was a simile to help his thought ; and what his thought 
was we are perfectly able to perceive, although the illus- 
tration of it was unfortunately chosen. 

Further on in his letter, Paul brings out more distinctly 
his peculiar idea of the resurrection. " There is a spiritual 
body" a he says, boldly yoking together these two incon- 
gruities, which is tantamount to saying: there is a bodily 
spirit ; there is a material soul. In the order of nature, we 
derive the natural body by birth from the primitive man ; 
but after Jesus, who was the first-fruit of the resurrection, 
we shall put on the spiritual or heavenly body ; and, turn- 
ing to the corpse-worshippers and manipulators of the 
Master's flesh, who had made him say : "A spirit hath not 
Jlcsh and bones as ye sec vie have" b he adds with warmth : 
" This I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit 
the kingdom of God, nor can corruption inherit incorrup- 
tion. And this mystery some of us shall live to see ; for, 
before the natural term of our lives, these bodies of ours, in 
a moment, in the very twinkling of an eye, at the last 
trump, which will certainly sound, shall be changed from 
corruptible to incorruptible, and put on their immor- 
tality." 

Now, as the process of the human resurrection — for 
which Paul finds a place in the economy of nature, along 
with the order of vegetables, and the different races of 
animals with their reproduction, growth, and death — was 
also the process or mode of the resurrection of Jesus, we 
can gather from these details his rationale of the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus.' 1 It was the death of his natural body, the 
germination and uprising from it of his spiritual, heavenly, 
and incorruptible body, in which he, and all who wear his 
image, will be forever clothed. 

He does not see how he confuses and contradicts him- 
self ; how the word " body," which he still insists upon, 
concedes the whole claim he is combating. What is this 

" I. Cor. xv., 44-49. b Luke xxiv., 39. c I. Cor. xv., 50-57. d I. Cov. xv., n-20. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 39I 

change, by which the corruptible becomes incorruptible, 
the mortal immortal ? Do we find its analogy in the ger- 
mination of wheat ? Very well ; the wheat germ, shoot, 
stalk, perfect plant, though not the subject sowed, which 
was a mere kernel of seed unlike them, is still a body, and 
material, and as such capable of dissolution. Shall we 
with him leave the correspondences of nature and soar 
into the visions and speculations of the celestial world of 
our aspirations and hopes, and assert : There is a natural 
body, and there is a spiritual body ? A spiritual body, — 
if such a thing were thinkable, — but still a body. Flesh 
and blood may not inherit the kingdom of God, but by 
some mysterious process these fleshly bodies shall at the 
last trump acquire some qualities and powers, that will fit 
them to pass over the confines of that kingdom, and — 
bodies still — put on incorruption. 

The speculation was too subtle to be popular. If Paul 
had affirmed immortality of the soul, asserted its superi- 
ority to and independence of the body, and resolutely 
adhered to his own thesis, — that flesh and blood, which 
is a synonym for the body, could not inherit immortality, 
— he would have been more in accord with the enlightened 
beliefs of the Jews, with the teachings of other religions 
older than Christianity, with the educated opinion of his 
time, and with the prevalent speculations of modern phi- 
losophy. Taking neither the philosophic nor the popular 
view, his ingenious surmises of the mode of the resurrec- 
tion failed to impress themselves upon the creed of Chris- 
tendom, which has read his equivocal words with great 
eagerness, because they are the substance of all that has 
been taught upon so fascinating a subject as human im- 
mortality, interpreting them either in the philosophic or 
in the gross form ; and, from want of clearness of expres- 
sion, growing out, perhaps, of want of clearness of concep- 
tion, they seem capable of either interpretation. 

But the triumph of the evangelists and regular apostles 
over Paul was more apparent than real. The whole 
speculation of immortality belongs to the department of 
philosophy. It is philosophy, rather than revelation, 
which, gathering its data from Egypt and India, from 
Zoroaster, Pythagoras, and Plato, as well as from Jesus 
and Paul, carefully meditating upon the phenomena of 



392 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

psychology, and the manifestations of the moral sense, 
has woven for mankind its thin and gorgeous hope of an 
immortal life. So that, though his own age and many 
succeeding ages rejected the metaphysical conceptions of 
a resurrection entertained by the cultivated apostle, and 
adhered to the vulgar traditions of the evangelists, the 
modern world, whose faith has received the education of 
science and philosophy, now cherishes its precious hope 
in the forms and symbols of Paul. The apostle of the 
Gentiles has become the apostle of the resurrection. It 
is the fervid and confident, although still controversial 
and inconsistent, language of Paul, that is read to-day over 
every newly opened grave in Christendom ; and that 
which he, with too much deference, said of his Master, 
may, if we look at the Christian records for the report, 
be more accurately said of himself : " He hath brought 
life and immortality to light." a 

It has been conceded that the tradition of a resur- 
rection of Jesus, though the mode of that resurrection 
seemed to have been the subject of dissent and contro- 
versy among the early believers, is better vouched than 
any of the New Testament traditions. If it stood upon 
authority alone, it would actually stand stronger than it 
does. If we should be told that Goethe and Humboldt 
and John Stuart Mill and Emerson entertained a belief 
in the manifestations of so-called Spiritualism, we should 
be strongly prepossessed in favor of their truth ; for it 
does not seem probable that such capacious, candid, and 
cultivated minds could concur in upholding a delusion. 
But if, besides, these clear-sighted men should give with 
particularity and detail the facts and occurrences upon 
which they base their belief, then we should feel required 
to examine the facts and occurrences, and determine 
whether they supported the belief. Just so, if we had 
only the undoubted historical fact, that such men as 
Peter, John, and Paul, and after them the enlightened 
bishops, scholars, and philosophers of the Christian 
Church, believed in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, it 
would command the respect of all unbiassed minds. But 
when these estimable men undertake to give with scrupu- 
lous minuteness the actual occurrence of the resurrection 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 393 

and tell how it happened, who were present, what was 
said, and what was done, we are fairly invited, nay, chal- 
lenged, to look into the details, to see if they form the 
basis for us of a rational belief. 

This is our precise attitude as candid students of his- 
tory. The messengers of the resurrection seem to have 
gone with their message, expecting that, as it was a wholly 
exceptional event, it would be received with surprise, with 
incredulity, with disbelief. This is just what the tradition 
itself declares. It says, when the women told the apos- 
tles, they disbelieved ; when the apostles told each other, 
they disbelieved each other ; and, when Jesus himself 
stood with them in Galilee, though some recognized and 
worshipped him, some doubted* Just so when the same 
story, preserved for us in the tradition, comes down to us, 
we will be at least as candid as the disciples, and hesitate 
and doubt and give our assent only to what seems con- 
sistent and probable. Though ready to believe much on 
the authority of such good and great men, we cannot 
overlook the fact that they insist that we shall take 
nothing upon their word, but take the testimony for our- 
selves, upon which they have believed. 

Let us now recur to what seems reasonably certain as 
to the death of Jesus. It took place, according to Mat- 
thew and Mark, at about three o'clock on the afternoon of 
the fourteenth day of the month Nisan, on Friday. 15 Luke 
does not indicate the hour, though he says that, from 
twelve o'clock till three, there was darkness over all the 
earth, and, after mentioning this circumstance, speaks of 
Jesus as speaking and dying, c so that his account does 
not contradict that of the two others. Some time during 
the evening, Joseph of Arimathea obtained from Pilate 
the custody of the body of Jesus, and, having swathed 
it in linen cloth, laid it in a sepulchre, and rolled a stone 
to barricade the entrance.' 1 All the narratives concur in 
representing that the entombment was hurried by tKe 
lateness of the hour and the necessity of completing 
everything before sunset, when the Sabbath began, after 
which even funeral rites became unlawful. 

Luke says the women who came with him from Gali- 

a Luke xxiv., 11 ; Mark xvi., ti, 13; Matt, xxviii., 17. 
b Matt, xxvii., 46; Mark xv., 34, 37. c Luke xxiii., 44, 46. d Matt, xxvii., 57-60. 



394 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

lee followed after and beheld the sepulchre, and how the 
body of Jesus was laid. Matthew and Mark, while de- 
claring that the women from Galilee stood afar off, and 
beheld the crucifixion, and naming Mary Magdalene and 
the mother of Joses, who seemed also to have been Jesus' 
own mother, and the mother of James, as among them, 
assert that none but the two first-named women came 
near and looked on at the entombment. a 

The Sabbath began, the pious rites due to the beloved 
remains not yet accomplished. To complete these rites, 
to put spices and perfumes with the cerements, as Mark 
and Luke assert, was the errand that brought the women, 
as soon as the Sabbath was over, again to the sepulchre. b 
There is no thought among them all that Jesus has not 
remained dead, nor the faintest anticipation of any coming 
up alive from the sepulchre. Sorrowfully, carefully, ex- 
pensively, they make the preparations to take a final 
leave of the lifeless form of him they had loved and be- 
lieved in. Now begin the contradictions in the story. 
To the interrogation, who first visited the tomb on Sunday 
after the body of Jesus had been put there Friday even- 
ing, Matthew says, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary ; 
Mark, Mary Magdalene and Mary, mother of James and 
Salome, — a substantial agreement ; but Luke answers, 
Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, the mother of James, the 
women who came from Galilee with Jesus, and other 
women that were with them, — quite a company of women, 
at the least more than four. 

Whom did the first visitors to the sepulchre see there ? 
To this, Luke answers : they saw two men in shining 
garments. Matthew affirms that they saw an angel of 
the Lord from heaven, sitting upon the rolled-away stone, 
whose countenance was like lightning, and his raiment 
white as snow. Mark's account is, that they saw a young 
man sitting within the sepulchre on the right side, clothed 
in a long white garment, and were affrighted. 41 These are 
details indeed, but they are important details ; and it is 
only by a substantial agreement as to facts so important, 
that an event, in itself incredible, is to be accepted as 

"Mark xv. , 47; Luke xxiii., 55. h Mark xvi., 1 ; Luke xxiv., 1. 
c Matt, xxviii., 1 ; Mark xvi., 1 ; Luke xxiii., 55 ; xxiv., 1, 10. 
<1 Matt, xxviii., 2, 5 j Mark xvi., 5 ; Luke xxiv., 4. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 395 

proved. There were two of these glittering men, says 
one witness ; nay, there was but one, say the other two. 
The two men stood beside the women, as they were per- 
plexed at not finding the corpse, says the first deponent ; 
nay, the one man sat within, on the right, deposes the 
next ; not at all, declares the third, he sat outside, away 
from the sepulchre, on the rolled-away stone. 

What did these glittering men, believed by all to be 
visitants from heaven, say to the women ? Whoever 
they were, they had been placed in charge to communi- 
cate to the world what transformation of the buried body 
had taken place. Their communication is of prime im- 
portance, and ought to have been preserved in its very 
words. Here is the record of it: a — 

" Fear not ye ; for I know that ye seek Jesus, who was 
crucified. He is not here ; for he is risen, as he said. 
Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, 
and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead ; and, 
behold, he goeth before you into Galilee ; there shall ye 
see him : lo, I have told you." — Matthew. 

" Be not affrighted. Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which 
was crucified. He is risen ; he is not here : behold the 
place where they laid him. But go your way, tell his dis- 
ciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee : 
there shall ye see him, as he said unto you." — Mark. 

" Why seek ye the living among the dead ? He is not 
here, but he is risen. Remember how he spake unto you 
when he was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of Man must 
be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be cruci- 
fied, and the third day rise again." — Luke. 

In the first part of this message there is sufficient 
accord. The last writer omits the words to reassure the 
fears of the surprised women, and surmises the errand of 
the women in a different way from the other two writers, 
and omits a most important direction to go and give 
information to the disciples ; but each statement affirms 
that Jesus is no longer in the sepulchre — a dead body — 
but is risen and living. When, however, we come to the 
latter clauses of the communication, there is a fatal varia- 
tion. All declare the message was that Jesus was not 
dead in the tomb ; but they differ both as to where he is 

■ Matt, xxviii., 5-7 ; Mark xvi., 6, 7 ; Luke xxiv. , 5-7. 



396 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

and where he is to be found, and what the ante mortem 
prediction of his had been concerning his reappearance. 
We come here upon a point over which the New Testa- 
ment records declare there had been a controversy among 
the first believers in Jesus. 

After the new faith had begun to gain converts in Jewry, 
after Peter and James and John, its official representatives 
from humble Galilean laborers, had grown to be pillars 
of the Church, after they had abandoned their humble 
avocation of fishermen, and, as the witnesses, trusted 
friends, companions, and kinsfolk of the Messiah, had 
come to be reverenced by the assembly as bishops and 
hierarchs, there came into the minds of the disciples an 
evident desire to disown as much as possible the disrepu- 
table and provincial relation of the career of Jesus with 
Galilee, and by giving him a closer connection with Jeru- 
salem, the priests, and elders, the temple worship, the 
national polity and its representatives, to make the active 
propagandism of the faith more effectual among enlight- 
ened and influential Jews. The first narratives, written 
on the authority of the little band of provincials who had 
come up with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem, all indicate 
Galilee as the theatre of Jesus' glory as a prophet. He 
only came to Jerusalem, they say, to condemn it, and 
foretell its doom, and to show how complete was his 
estrangement from it. Accordingly, they tinge the story 
of the resurrection with their local prejudices. He will 
not show himself alive to proud and cruel Jerusalem. He 
is not there. He will not even tarry to speak to his 
mother, to Peter, or to John, whom he loved. He has 
betaken himself to his beloved Galilee, which believed in 
him. There, only there, shall ye see him. 

As has been seen, the whole Johannic drama had for 
one of its designs the presentation in its most imposing 
light to Zion of her prophetic king, and to do away the 
reproach, which seems the burden of the story : " Can 
any good thing come out of Nazareth? Search, and look; 
for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet."* Accordingly, the 
phenomenon of the resurrection accommodates itself in 
the writer's conception to this purpose. Jesus is not in 
Galilee, nor will he show himself first there. In the 

"John 1 , 46; vii., 52. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 397 

guise of the keeper of the garden, he himself stands by 
Mary of Magdala, and calls her by name ; and she recog- 
nizes him as her crucified Master. 11 

It seems to give a date to the composition of the Third 
Gospel, that its version of the resurrection stands midway 
between the Galilean and the Judaic traditions. The 
Galilean tradition, as given by the first two evangelists, 
is, that, though Jesus rose alive from his tomb in the en- 
virons of Jerusalem, he first showed himself alive to the 
twelve in Galilee. The Judaic tradition, affected by the 
more conciliatory policy pursued by the followers of Jesus 
after his death toward the Pharisees, asserts that the in- 
terviews of the risen Master with his followers were in 
Jerusalem, which he expressly forbade them to leave. For 
Luke carefully eliminates from his affidavit all reference 
to an appointment of Galilee as the place of reunion. 
We find evident indication of a dispute that must have 
quite divided the opinions of the little band of believers. 
The older Galilean authorities, still clinging to their local 
attachments, had insisted, that, as Jesus had honored 
Galilee by doing in it all his great miracles, and preach- 
ing all his fundamental doctrines, so had he recognized 
it, by making it the place where he would show himself 
first alive to his chosen witnesses after his passion. 
They had gone so far as to put into the mouth of Jesus 
a distinct and explicit prediction and direction that in 
Galilee should be the place of meeting after the resurrec- 
tion, as undoubtedly they had sought the sanction of 
Jesus for many other points of belief, which, in the propa- 
gandism of the faith, had become to their minds of prime 
importance. Luke is no sceptic, but a man of easy faith, 
full of innocent wonder at the miracles he has come fully 
to believe in ; and it is not possible for him to deny any 
tradition of Jesus, which honors his prophetic insight. 
So he changes the story, or rather, perhaps, — for there is 
no reason to question his good faith, — he reports a version 
of it, which the Pharisaic Christians had come to believe. 
Did not Jesus say himself, that he would appear alive in 
Galilee ? eagerly asked the party of the primitive disci- 
ples. 1 ' Not that he would appear in Galilee, say the later 
Jewish proselytes, but lie said in Galilee that he would 

a John xx., 14-17. "Matt, xxvi., 32; Mark xiv., 2S. 



39§ OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

appear. While the believers in the older story were too 
numerous and too influential in the Church embracing, 
doubtless, Peter, John, and James, and all the original 
apostles, to allow their testimony to be overruled, and the 
first tradition to be altered, it can be well understood how 
a policy, which we find avowed among the early missiona- 
ries of the faith, a would allow a contradictory tradition to 
be told in those countries and among those people, where 
it might help in winning souls to Christ. So the two 
accounts, though impossible of reconciliation, find the 
place in the Christian literature, and, ultimately, in the 
canon of Scripture, which they have ever since main- 
tained. 

There is another illustration in the communication, by 
which the resurrection was said to have been first an- 
nounced to the world, of how such an occasion was seized 
upon to get some sanction for cherished beliefs. Matthew, 
writing first, says : " The angel said, Go quickly, and tell 
his disciples that he is risen from the dead." Mark, writ- 
ing later, reports the message : " Go your way, tell his 
disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Gali- 
lee." Was not Peter a disciple, and was he not included 
in the direction to tell the disciples ? Can there be any 
doubt that here was a writer, whom tradition declares to 
have been the exponent and mouthpiece of Peter, endeav- 
oring to get honor for his patron, and to get sanction for 
the authority, which, according to the Acts of the Apostles, 
Peter in his later life assumed over the faith of the Church, 
— an authority culminating in the enormous pretensions 
of the Papacy ? 

Thus far, we have no statement from either witness of 
any apparition of Jesus. Indeed, according to Matthew 
and Mark and the more credible tradition, such appear- 
ance at Jerusalem will be impossible ; for it will not only 
contradict the angelic assurance, but the explicit predic- 
tion of Jesus in his lifetime. The women, whether two 
or many, find the tomb empty, the body they had come to 
embalm gone, and angels, they do not agree how many, or 
whether standing or sitting, within or without the tomb, 
who declare that Jesus is not there. But it does not 
appear that those angels pretended to be, nor are they by 

a I. Cor. ix., 20-22. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 399 

any of the visitants supposed to be, Jesus or impersona- 
tions of Jesus. 

Now is there any account that Jesus himself appeared 
to any person other than the early visiting Galilean 
women, at or near the tomb,- where he was buried ? All 
the narratives agree in negativing this inquiry. Even the 
Johannic drama is explicit in declaring that to no man 
did the risen Master appear at or near his place of burial. 

Did the Galilean women or either of them see Jesus 
alive at or near the sepulchre ? Matthew says, the two 
Marys ran from the sepulchre to tell the disciples what 
they had seen and heard; and that Jesus himself met them, 
as they went, and hailed them ; and that the women clasp- 
ing his feet did homage to him, after which Jesus himself 
renewed the angelic message, and commanded the women 
to tell his brethren to go into Galilee, where they should 
see him.* As yet there is nothing inconsistent in the 
two statements. When the angel told the women : He is 
not here, it was meant that he was not in the tomb. It 
was not declared, that he had departed from Jerusalem to 
Galilee, only that he was going to Galilee before his disci- 
ples, and would show himself o them only there, though 
he might show himself to his mother and his friend before 
he left Jerusalem. Mark declares that Jesus showed him- 
self first to Mary Magdalene, and the context requires us 
to understand that this was at Jerusalem ; b but he does 
not assert, that his mother Mary or any other woman was 
present at the interview. It seems fairly to be implied, 
that the other two appearances of Jesus after his death 
mentioned by Mark were in the vicinity of Jerusalem, — 
that is, to two 'disciples walking into the country, and to 
the eleven as they sat at meat; and no meeting whatever 
in Galilee is mentioned, though this writer declares else- 
where the prediction of Jesus making an appointment of 
Galilee for a showing after his resurrection, and also the 
angelic message that the disciples and Peter should go to 
Galilee to see Jesus.' 1 

If we reject all of the last chapter of Mark after the 
eighth verse, as funning, in the judgment of Tischendorf 
and of other competent critics, no part of his original and 
genuine gospel, the appearance of Jesus to any person in 

11 Mitt, xxviii., 9, :o. '' Mark xvi., 9. c Mark xvi., 14, <1 Mark xiv. , 2S; xvi., 7. 



400 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Jerusalem stands upon still slighter testimony. The 
statement of such appearance by Matthew is offset by the 
denial of it by Luke, and remains unproved. As, how- 
ever, these twelve suspected verses stand accredited in 
our common version of the "New Testament, upon which 
the whole structure of this argument is built ; as they 
have not been omitted even in the lately revised Script- 
ural translation, — it is deemed proper to consider them 
as a part of the early, if not the earliest, tradition of the 
resurrection. In an argument to show that all these 
details of communications with Jesus, after his death, 
must have been legendary accretions of his veritable 
history, it would not be apposite to disregard a part of 
them, because they are suspected of being later than 
the rest. 

But, when later, Luke undertook, in a letter to his friend 
Theophilus, to set forth in order " a declaration of the 
things that are most surely believed among us, as deliv- 
ered by the eye-witness," the tradition of an appearance 
of Jesus either to the two Marys or to Mary Magdalene 
alone at Jerusalem had ceased to be told and believed. 
For Luke gives, in two methods, the precise intelligence 
which the Galilean women conveyed to the eleven disci- 
ples ; and it is something quite different. There were 
many women, he says, who had visited the sepulchre ; and 
the report they brought back was, that the tomb was 
empty, and that two angels declared Jesus to have risen 
from the dead. Their story was wholly disbelieved : only 
Peter ran to the sepulchre, and found no corpse therein, 
and went away, perplexed with doubt and surprise. 15 The 
account of the two disciples travelling into the country is 
also given by Luke ; and, in their talk, they report pre- 
cisely what the women had told on Sunday morning to 
the assembled disciples. It is not that they had seen 
Jesus, but that they had not found his body in the tomb, 
and had also seen a vision of angels who said he was 
alive. Him, they assert, they did not see. c 

Comparing these documents with each other, and 
applying to them the well-known rules of testing oral 
testimony, it seems fairly inferrible, that the appearance 
of Jesus alive to Mary Magdalene or to her and other Gali- 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 4OI 

lean women in Jerusalem is not proved. Luke, one of the 
witnesses, emphatically denies it ; and, while Matthew 
and. Mark assert it, they assert with substantial circum- 
stances inconsistent with each other, and the occurrence 
itself was inconsistent with an appointment, which, they 
say, was made by Jesus with his disciples, male and 
female, to show himself to them in Galilee. 

Were there no other proofs of a resurrection of Jesus 
than these, we should not be justified in believing that 
it had occurred. Credulous and enthusiastic as were the 
disciples, upon this evidence alone it is admitted by all the 
historians that the disciples refused to believe. On this 
evidence, not reported, as it is to us, by unnamed writers, 
without historic method or historic integrity, but told at 
first hand by persons they confided in and respected, the 
disciples believed not. a Luke asserts that they listened 
contemptuously to the story. " Their words seemed to 
them as idle tales, and they believed them not." b 

The next appearance claimed to be of the risen Jesus 
was to the two disciples travelling on Sunday to Emmaus. 
One of these disciples was Cleopas, husband of the aunt 
of Jesus. Of course, the person of Jesus was well known 
to them. In the whole legend of the resurrection, Jesus 
is made to authenticate his physical presence to his won- 
dering friends by challenging an inspection and handling 
of his body, with the marks of the crucifixion still upon 
it. Having been suddenly put to death when in full 
health, very little change could have affected his features 
and expression. If the man overtaken on the road to 
Emmaus had indeed been Jesus, there seems no good 
reason why his intimate friends should not have recog- 
nized him. The explanation ventured by the writer to 
meet this obvious inference, that their eyes were holden 
that they should not know him? is clumsy and unsatisfac- 
tory. Why should their eyes be holden, when it was the 
evident purpose of his appearance that they should know 
him ? But he walked and talked with them for hours. 
Of course, they would have known his looks, his tones, his 
modes of speech ; and, as they did not, we should be com- 
pelled to conclude the person who walked with them was 

"Markxvi., ix. •» Luke xxiv., 11. <"• Luke xxiv , iS; John xix., 25. 

J Luke xxiv., 13-33. 



402 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

not an acquaintance. The account says they recognized 
him only when he blessed and brake the bread ; though 
what distinguishing peculiarity there could have been in 
this action, it is hard to understand. They think he 
vanished out of their sight ; but, if he suddenly left them, 
and they did not follow him, such disappearance need 
not have been supernatural. 

It was natural that in their excited minds, disturbed 
and elated with what they had heard before leaving Jeru- 
salem, about a vision of angels revealing to the women 
that Jesus was alive, they should harbor the most welcome 
surmise that the grave and courteous stranger, so con- 
versant with the Messianic Scriptures, was Jesus ; but, 
when they told the story while fresh in their memory, 
with all its details, to the assembled disciples, there was 
no one to give it credence'' 

There must have been at Jerusalem many secret ad- 
herents of Jesus, of the type of Nicodemus and Joseph 
of Arimathea, who refrained under the prevalent terror 
from avowing their sympathy. Doubtless, the unknown 
man was a scribe, who joined the two travellers, and, 
finding from the questions he asked that they were ad- 
herents of the crucified, thought it safe to express his 
secret conviction and avow the faith he held with them 
in common. He withheld his name ; and, when he feared 
that, in his enthusiasm, his disclosures might have ex- 
ceeded the bounds of prudence, he might have left their 
company to avoid the possibility of being betrayed to the 
hostile influences that then controlled Jerusalem. 

Thus far, then, nothing is shown to have happened indi- 
cating that the dead Jesus has been restored to life, at 
least nothing, that the accredited tradition, as told by the 
three evangelists, concurrently maintains. Whatever man- 
ifestation was made to Mary Magdalene, or to the two 
travelling disciples, joyfully and confidently told by them, 
met with no credence even from those who so much 
wished to believe it. Of itself, it should not command 
for a moment our faith, though, as the disciples came 
afterward to recognize the resurrection as an accom- 
plished fact, we, too, when we shall have found other 
reasons for believing in it, may imitate them in revising 

a Mark xvi., 13. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 4O3 

our first judgment as to these equivocal and uncertain 
appearances. Upon what other manifestations did the 
disciples come to accept the resurrection as a veritable 
event in the career of Jesus ? 

Matthew says, the only manifestation of Jesus after- 
ward was in a mountain in Galilee, where Jesus in his 
lifetime had made an appointment to meet his followers. 
He says : " The eleven disciples went away into a moun- 
tain, where Jesus had appointed them. And when they 
saw him, they worshipped him ; but some doubted. And 
Jesus came and spake unto them, saying : All power is 
given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, 
and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; teach- 
ing them to observe all things whatsoever I have com- 
manded you : and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto 
the end of the world." a Mark — if the whole passage 
be not an interpolation — says : "Afterward he appeared 
unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them 
with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they 
believed not them which had seen him after he was risen. 
And he said unto them : Go ye into all the world, and 
preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth 
and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not 
shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them 
that believe. In my name shall they cast out devils ; 
they shall speak with new tongues ; they shall take up 
serpents ; and, if they drink any deadly thing, it shall 
not hurt them ; they shall lay hands on the sick, and 
they shall recover." b 

Luke's account of the manifestation to the eleven is 
in this wise. It was at Jerusalem, where the eleven and 
their party were gathered together. " As they spake, Jesus 
himself stood in the midst of them, and said : Peace be 
unto you. Why are ye troubled ? and why do thoughts 
arise in your hearts ? Behold my hands and my feet, that 
it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not 
flesh and bones, as ye see me have." Then, he showed 
his hands and feet, and called for food and ate before 
them, and, resuming his communication, said : " These 
are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet 

•'.Matt, xxviii., 16-20. l>Markxvi., 14-18. 



4O4 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were 
written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets and 
in the psalms concerning me. Thus it is written, and 
thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the 
dead the third day ; and that repentance and remission 
of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, 
beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these 
things. And, behold, I send the promise of my Father 
upon you : but tarry in the city of Jerusalem, until ye 
be endued with power from on high." Then he led 
them forth, as far as Bethany, and blessed them, and 
was parted from them, and carried up to heaven. a 

The last words of wise and great men, their grand sum- 
ming up, at the last, of the experience and teachings of 
life, have always been sacredly cherished among mankind, 
who have hoped from the verge, that bounds the fascinat- 
ing mystery beyond, to get some gleam of intelligence. 
How much more precious is intelligence brought not from 
this, but the other side of the gulf of death ! Here is one 
of the wisest, the purest, the bravest souls, that ever lived, 
returned from the grave ! He has deigned to stop in his 
passage from corruption and the tomb, to incorruption 
and a conscious eternal life in the spiritual world, to show 
himself to his friends. He shrinks not from their ques- 
tions ; and, unlike the thin company of ghosts, that appall 
us with their austerity, he challenges their most familiar 
handling of his person, and precedes them to feasts of 
eating and conviviality. Was ever the aching curiosity 
of man so lavishly satisfied ? Was ever such a transcend- 
ent communication made to mankind ? How momentous 
it is ! Could one man of the eleven ever in his lifetime 
forget the substance or even the very form, body, expres- 
sion, and tone of it, for it was only a few words ? Incapa- 
ble of being forgotten, as it was said, in form as well as 
spirit, in its very words and phraseology, what presump- 
tion, what audacity of impiety to falsify it, to suppress 
any of it, to add anything to it; to inject into it any 
trivial detail, any incertitude ! And yet what perplexes 
and astounds us in putting together these old documents, 
the muniments of our title to an eternal life, is to find 
them so contradictory, not only in form and expression, 
but also in substance and subject-matter. 

a Luke xxiv., 44, 46-49, 50-53. 






LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 405 

Where was this most consequential and momentous 
interview between a divine being, who had come back 
from death, to which in the form of man he had been 
subjected, to throw light upon the darkness of the grave? 
and who were allowed the supreme privilege of partici- 
pating in it ? It was on a mountain in Galilee, says our 
most trustworthy witness, upon whom we have chiefly 
relied for the historic details of the life of Jesus. Nay, 
reply two other witnesses, it was in a private room in 
Jerusalem. Only eleven apostles were present, maintain 
Matthew and Mark. The eleven apostles, and they of 
their party, the body of Jesus' adherents, were present, 
says Luke. 

Let us suppose, instead of the vast stake depending 
upon the actuality of this appearance of Jesus and upon 
the communication he is believed to have made to the 
world, it had been simply the title to an estate claimed 
to have been devised by a nuncupative will. The judge 
inquires of the three witnesses : Where were the words, 
you claim to have the legal effect of a will, uttered by 
the testator? Two of them testify, they were spoken in 
a club-house in Boston ; and one, they were spoken on 
a mountain in New Hampshire. The judge would not 
permit them to testify as to the words, however accordant 
the report might be ; for he would say : Until you can fix 
the time and place of the comimtnication, I cannot permit 
you to give its import. If it should be suggested that 
the deceased just before his death was in the company 
of the witnesses both in a club-house in Boston and on 
a mountain in New Hampshire, and in both places he 
talked about disposing of his estate, the explanation might 
let in the testimony as to the language, because the wit- 
nesses might honestly disagree as to the place where the 
effective words were uttered. But let us suppose that 
two of the witnesses persist in declaring : We know 
nothing about any conversation of the deceased in New 
Hampshire ; we never met him there. He assured us 
that he had not been in New Hampshire for a month 
before our last interview with him, and that he wished 
to make his will in Boston, so that his estate could be 
administered under the laws of Massachusetts ; while the 
third witness should insist : His devisees, his counsel, his 



406 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

friends, all wished him to make his will in Boston ; but 
he insisted that he would do nothing about it till he could 
get back to New Hampshire, and he made an appointment 
with them and us to meet him there for that purpose. 
In such an aspect of the testimony, the disagreement as 
to the attendant circumstances would make it impossible 
that it all related to the same transaction, and the court 
could never come to a consideration of the words of the 
communication. 

The proof of Jesus' appearance stands much in this 
way. Matthew says it was in a mountain in Galilee by 
express appointment of Jesus, made in his lifetime, re- 
newed by angelic messengers stationed at his tomb.* 
Mark and Luke say it was in a room in the city of Jerusa- 
lem ; b and the latter adds, that Jesus expressly forbade 
the disciples to leave Jerusalem and to go to Galilee, and 
that they did not go thither. 

But, to carry the illustration further, let it now be sup- 
posed that, in the case of this nuncupative will, the scru- 
ples of the judge about the irreconcilable attending cir- 
cumstances had been overcome, and that he had defi- 
nitely or provisionally permitted the witnesses to testify 
as to the words of the testator, claimed to operate as a 
devise. They recapitulate them. They are taken down, 
and this is their purport. One witness says : the deceased 
said he desired all to take notice that all his property, 
real and personal, was to go to his deceased wife's 
nephew. The next witness says : what I heard him say 
was, that all he left was to be given to the town of Han- 
over, as a fund for the support of its poor. The third 
witness, on being put upon oath, testifies : he said he 
wanted us to be witnesses that he was about to make a 
verbal will, and then added : whatever I leave I desire 
to go to Harvard College. Could either of the devisees 
obtain an estate from such utterly contradictory testi- 
mony ? 

But, as to the substance and subject-matter of the post- 
mortuary communication of Jesus, the testimony of the 
written tradition is quite as conflicting. According to 
Matthew, he said : that all power was given to him in 

■'Matt, xxviii., 7, 10, 16; xxvi., 32. t'Markxvi., 14, 19. 

c Luke xxiv., 33, 36, 49, 50; Acts i., 4, 8, 12, 14. 






LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 407 

heaven and earth, and that he should always be with his 
disciples till the end of the world. Accordingly, Matthew 
makes no mention of his withdrawal to heaven ; nor can 
he do so consistently with the assurance that he had 
declared Jesus had given, that he had come back from 
death to stay with them to the near end of the world. 
The message he gave, according to Matthew, was, that 
his disciples should teach all nations to observe the things 
he had commanded, — that is, that they should keep his 
moral precepts, — a declaration quite in harmony with Mat- 
thew's view of the mission of Jesus. 

Mark makes the communication consist of a reproach of 
the disciples for not believing what Mary Magdalene and 
the two disciples had told them, whereas their caution and 
candor seem only commendable. The charge to the disci- 
ples was not the inculcation of moral precepts at all, but 
to go and tell every creature that the kingdom of heaven 
was at hand, or preach the good news, and he that be- 
lieved that, and accepted baptism, should be saved ; and 
he that believed not should be damned. Then, he de- 
clared that real believers should be known by their power 
to cast out devils, to speak with tongues, to heal the sick 
by touch, and to drink and handle poisonous things with- 
out harm. He said nothing about a purpose to remain 
with his disciples to the end; for the witness declares that, 
after his message, he was received up into heaven, and sat 
on the right hand of God. a 

Luke's version of the last testament of Jesus is almost 
wholly different with the exception of a statement of the 
preaching among all nations of — not the moral precepts, 
nor the kingdom of heaven — but of a remission of sins in 
Jesus' name to succeed repentance. Thus, if we ask what 
did the risen Master direct his witnesses and apostles to 
preach, Matthew says, his doctrines of morality; Mark 
says, the kingdom of heaven, and faith and baptism as the 
conditions of salvation ; while Luke insists that it was the 
forgiveness of sins for Jesus' sake to all who repented. 
According to Luke, he did not chide his friends for their 
doubt, or attribute it to perversity, but gently reassured 
them with actual proofs, both of his identity and of his 
physical presence, with all his members, functions, and 



40S OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

appetites, and afterwards took up the debate, which con- 
stitutes so large a part of the controversial Epistles of 
Paul, and is dramatically reproduced in the Fourth Gos- 
pel, and labored to impress upon his hearers that his 
career as a prophet, his crucifixion and his resurrection, 
were all foreshadowed in the Hebrew scriptures. As in 
Mark, everything Luke says implies a withdrawal and 
leave-taking, and not a staying in the world till its end ; 
and so Luke tells elsewhere of Jesus' formal withdrawing 
in the sight of many witnesses to heaven." 

It is probable that in the First Gospel we have the ear- 
liest tradition of the resurrection ; but, as it did not get 
committed to writing till after the writing of Paul's Epis- 
tles, it contains also, what came to be believed among 
a part of the disciples, the story of the meeting of Jesus 
with Mary Magdalene, as she departed from the tomb. 
This must be considered an interpolation, since any show- 
ing of himself by Jesus to his disciples in Jerusalem was 
inconsistent with Matthew's declaration, that both Jesus 
and the angelic messenger had appointed Galilee as the 
place for such showing. It is easy to perceive how the 
story grew in the telling ; for, brief as Mark's general 
biography is, it is fuller than Matthew's concerning the 
resurrection. Jesus, according to Mark, shows himself 
first to Mary Magdalene, after that to two disciples, and 
then to the eleven apostles, sitting at meat, — all in 
Jerusalem. Mark adds a distinct appearance not men- 
tioned by Matthew, and places the interview with the 
eleven in Jerusalem instead of Galilee. When Luke — 
the date is not known, but certainly after many other 
lives of Jesus had been written b — contributes his me- 
morabilia, although he discountenances the story of any 
appearance to the women, or to any disciple, previously 
to the two travellers to Emmaus, he gives the last- 
named appearance with vivid and picturesque details ; c 
and the appearance to the eleven at Jerusalem, with a 
much fuller communication from Jesus to his disciples. d 
If we adopt Tischendorf's conclusion that the last twelve 
verses of Mark's Gospel are additions by another hand to 
the genuine writing, the three distinct appearances of 
Jesus mentioned in our Second Gospel — which is prob- 

■* Acts i. ( 9-12. •> Luke i., :. c Luke xxiv., 13-33. lI Luke xxiv., 36-49. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 4O9 

ably older than the Third, in which but two appearances 
are mentioned — become intelligible. So far as they are 
genuine, the first two evangels make mention of but one 
appearance, and the third evangel of but two appearances 
of the risen Jesus. 

When later Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles, he 
told of a tarrying of Jesus among his followers after his 
death for a period of forty days, and of a showing of him- 
self alive by many infallible proofs, and of much general 
instruction given pertaining to the kingdom of heaven. 
This statement does not necessarily imply a showing of 
Jesus to his followers each one of the forty days ; but it 
does imply that during six weeks Jesus was in the habit 
of frequent intercourse with his disciples, and gave them 
copious counsel and instruction. 11 

Did not this writer think these " things pertaining to the 
kingdom of God," which Jesus, returning from the realms 
of death and about to ascend to the counsels and com- 
panionship of the Father, had stopped to confide to his 
disciples, worth telling ? Did he think the recitations of 
Old Testament stories, which make up the speeches of 
Stephen, of Peter, and of Paul, of so much more moment 
than these awful last words of the king and judge of the 
world ? If such things had been spoken, would they not 
have burned themselves indelibly into each believer's 
heart, who would have exclaimed : — 

" Remember thee ? 
Ay, thou great ghost, while memory holds a seat 
In this distracted globe. Remember thee ? 
Yea, from the table of my memory 
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, 
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, 
That youth and observation copied there; 
And thy commandment all alone shall live 
Within the book and volume of my brain 
Unmixed with baser matter: yes, yes, by heaven." 

When Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians, 
about the year 59 — though this was probably earlier 
than the writing of the Acts or either of the Synoptic 
Gospels in their present form — the tradition, as learned 
by him, seemed to be of five distinct appearances of 
Jesus to his disciples, enumerated in this order : first to 

"Acts i., 2-12. 



4IO OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Peter alone, then to the twelve, then to five hundred 
disciples at once, then to James, then to all the apos- 
tles." It is singular that the appearance first and solely 
to Peter is nowhere else mentioned in the New Testa- 
ment writings, not even by Mark, whose story a definite 
tradition imputes to the dictation of Peter, and incredi- 
ble that five hundred of the brethren should have been 
assembled together, when the whole body of believers 
numbered but one hundred and twenty, and when the 
difficulty of assembling them all — scattered and alarmed 
as they were — must have been very great. b 

The Pauline version of the resurrection however, though 
avowed hearsay, stands upon better authority than any- 
thing in the Christian records, having for its sponsor so 
respectable a writer as Paul. When we can perceive the 
story growing thus in the very process of its telling, when 
we find in what is believed to be its earliest oral promul- 
gation not a trace of any separate appearings of Jesus to 
Peter or to James, or of any assemblage of five hundred 
brethren, who all attested it, some of them known and 
living when Paul wrote, we are compelled to conclude that 
the other details, less contradicted, are, like these, the 
accretions of an enthusiastic faith, which had for its sup- 
port but little, if any, basis of fact. It certainly is surpris- 
ing that the primitive Christians should have gone out 
among the sceptics and philosophers of the first century 
with such a stupendous announcement as that Jesus had 
appeared in bodily life after his burial, without having 
been able to agree among themselves as to where the 
manifestation took place, how many times it was repeated, 
to whom it was made, or what was the substance or sub- 
ject-matter of the communication which the resuscitated 
Master made to his followers. 

It will not be legitimate to cite the Fourth Gospel, with 
the critical estimate of it adopted in this paper, as a fourth 
distinct account of the resurrection, since it is not probable 
that any historic purpose or historic responsibility con- 
trolled the writer of that unique production. It is enough 
to remark in this connection that the risen Jesus of John, 
which is the prevalent Christian conception, that has con- 
tinued till our time, no more resembles the risen Jesus 

a I. Cor. xv., 3-8. bActs i. , 15. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 41 1 

of the older traditions, than does the controversial Jesus, 
holding metaphysical colloquies with the Pharisees, with 
Nicodemus, with Pilate, and with his disciples, accord with 
the Galilean prophet, announcing the kingdom of heaven 
and preaching the ethics of poverty, of non-resistance, 
and of universal almsgiving. 

We have left then five testimonies to be weighed and 
compared with each other. Paul's, the first committed to 
writing, the most genuine, and, on the whole, the most 
respectable, asserts that Jesus first showed himself alive 
to Peter, that later James was favored with a private in- 
terview, and that five hundred of his disciples saw him 
simultaneously. But when we take up Mark's deposition, 
we find it disclaiming that distinction for the apostle, who 
is believed in the Church to have dictated the Second 
Gospel. Mary Magdalene, it says, saw Jesus first. Peter 
only saw him later with the other eleven. Matthew's 
Gospel, believed to be the written form which the orig- 
inal Galilean tradition of Jesus assumed some time during 
the first or second century, of all others ought to know 
about an appearance to James, who, in his Epistle most 
nearly expresses the Galilean gospel of good works and 
poverty ; but it does not make special mention of him 
as present at any reported conversation of the resur- 
rected Jesus. All the other deponents ignore the mani- 
festation to the five hundred brethren, and Luke gives a 
statement which makes such a manifestation impossible. 1 
On the other hand, Paul ignores any manifestation to 
Mary Magdalene or to the two travellers to Emmaus, and 
by classing these appearances with that to him in vision 
on the road to Damascus, and by his exposition of the 
nature of the spiritual body, b most plainly indicates that 
all these appearances were apparitional, and not actual. 

Everything before the appearance to the eleven rests 
upon the credit of Mary Magdalene, whose account, freshly 
told, the apostles themselves disbelieved, and of the two 
travelling disciples, whose conjecture that Jesus had walked 
and talked with them seemed an idle tale to their fellow 
disciples ; and, when we consider its details, we are forced 
to adopt their suspicion. As to the appearance to the 
eleven, besides the hopelessly irreconcilable statements 

nActsi.,15. b I. Cor. xv., 50. 



412 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

as to where it occurred and what was the matter commu- 
nicated, we have the naive avowal, that, of the eleven to 
whom it was said to have been manifested, some doubted.* 
The whole Church, including these disciples, came after- 
ward to believe and persistently to maintain that Jesus 
had come back to his earthly life. We ought at least to 
maintain the candor of these ardent men, and conclude 
that a personal manifestation that could not coerce their 
faith cannot now secure ours in its contradictory and 
confused telling by irresponsible annalists. 

But an argument, that builds itself upon what may be 
called a professional and cunning cross-examination, does 
not press with the weight of assured conviction upon large 
and liberal minds. For such minds, these considerations 
are apposite. Why should Jesus have appeared alive 
after his death on the cross ? Such an appearance was 
wholly outside of his own anticipations and prognostica- 
tions. His dominant idea was of a kingdom of heaven, of 
which he came to have an assured faith, that he himself 
was king. He believed that his human life was his send- 
ing from the Deity to the chosen people, the Jews, to give 
them their last dispensation of grace and salvation. First, 
the Lord of the vineyard sent his servants, the prophets, 
but, last of all, his son. But the wicked husbandmen, who 
had stoned and disregarded the servants, will reject and 
slay the son. b The son of God and king of heaven must 
submit to shame and death. But, after death, he will come 
again, not as before in weakness, still less in secrecy, but 
in power and glory, with all the holy angels with him. 
His coming will need no proclamation, nor will men say : 
Lo here, or lo there is Christ ; for, as the lightning in the 
east flashes through all the heavens, so shall the coming 
of the Son of Man be. All the earth shall be astounded 
at the brightness of his coming, and all the tribes of the 
earth shall mourn because of him. c 

After the legend of the resurrection, against some pro- 
test, had established itself among the believers, Jesus him- 
self is made to give sanction to it by precise predictions of 
it in his lifetime. Thus, in Matthew's narrative, after the 
famous conference with his disciples at Caesarea-Philippi, 

a Matt, xxviii., 17. b Matt, xxi., 33-44. 

cMatt. xxiv., 23-31 ; xxv., 31 ; xxvi., 64 ; Luke xxi., 25-36. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 413 

Jesus is declared to have begun to show to his disciples, 
that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things of 
the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be 
raised again on the third day. a Coming down from the 
mount of transfiguration, he charges his disciples not to tell 
of the vision of Moses and Elias, till after he had risen from 
the dead. b Again, before leaving Galilee, Jesus said to his 
followers : " The Son of Man shall be betrayed into the 
hands of men ; and they shall kill him, and the third day he 
shall be raised again." While going up to Jerusalem, 
Jesus took the twelve apart, and told them : "The Son of 
Man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto 
the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and 
shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, 
and crucify him ; and the third day he shall rise again." d 
Finally, in his last interview with them, before he was 
betrayed, having told them his time was at hand, he said : 
" It is written, I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep 
shall be scattered abroad. But after I am risen again, I 
will go before you into Galilee." e Mark reports the same 
communications, as made on the same occasions, with 
such similarity of language that one account is evidently 
copied from the other/ Luke reports the first three of 
these communications in quite similar language.* 5 

That Jesus foreboded his death at Jerusalem from 
the malignity of his enemies, whose animosity he 
had determined to provoke by severe denunciations, has 
already been seen. He believed himself to be the Shep- 
herd, who was to be smitten, the Messiah, whose grave 
was to be made with the wicked, and that this suffering 
and shame must needs precede his coming as Judge and 
Conqueror and King. The manner of his death, by 
whom and in what form it was to be inflicted, and the 
minute details of his mockery and scourging, as he could 
not have foreseen, must have been added to his actual 
declarations after the event, as was akso the expectation 
of a resurrection after the third day. That he did not 
predict his resurrection the third day is evident from the 
fact that the Old Scriptures, though certain of them in 






Matt, xvi., 21. •> Matt, xvii., 9. c Matt, xvii., 22, 23. & Matt. XX., li 
e Matt, xxvi., 18-32. ' Mark viiL, 3: ; ix., 31, 32 ; x., 32-34; xiv., 28. 
g Luke ix., 22, 44, 4SJ xviii., 31-34. 



4H OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

the fanciful interpretations of the time, were believed to 
indicate that Messiah could not be held by the powers of 
evil forever in the under world, did not indicate three 
days, as the period of his sojourn in those realms of 
silence. The grotesque story of Jonah's living burial for 
three days in the belly of a whale, which evidently came 
to be credited as a veritable adventure befalling one of 
their national prophets, might have been seized hold of 
by the evangelists and disciples, as typical of the death 
and resurrection of their Master. But we cannot impute 
this whimsical fancy to Jesus without involving him in 
self-contradiction.* The second coming of the Son of 
Man was to usher in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus 
could not have indicated three days after his death as 
the opening of an epoch the day and hour of which he 
declared he did not know. a 

But the naivete of the evangelists' narration quite con- 
futes them ; for all accounts of the resurrection — those 
claimed to be historic and those avowedly or apparently 
dramatic — represent the surprise of Jesus' disciples at 
his resurrection to have been complete. The Marys and 
the company of women, larger or smaller, went to the 
sepulchre early on Sunday morning — Matthew and John 
say only to see the sepulchre, the burial rites having 
been completed Friday evening — Mark and Luke say to 
complete the burial rites, by adding ointments and spices 
to the cerements. But no reader of any of the deposi- 
tions can fail to notice that the women went without the 
slightest expectation or hope of finding yesns alive, though 

*The opinion here arrived at in reference to Jesus having predicted in his lifetime a 
rising again in three days after his death is the result of balancing conflicting testimony. It 
is quite probable that Jesus did speak of himself as fulfilling some function or office of the 
prophet Jonah. Was the similitude that of a temporary death and a resuscitation after three 
days ? So the disciples and evangelists evidently came to believe. A rumor seemed to have 
got abroad, that he had said if the temple were destroyed he would build it again in three days; 
and for this saying, as blasphemy, he was actually tried. But we must remember that this 
testimony broke down, and was discredited even by his enemies. What Jesus did say of 
himself in connection with Jonah is probably just what Matthew and Luke agree in re- 
porting : — 

" This evil generation desir% a sign. No sign shall be given it but the sign of Jonas the 
prophet ; for, as Jonas was a sign to the Ninevites, so shall the Son of Man be to this genera- 
tion ; for the Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonas, but this generation have not 
repented though a greater than Jonas has preached to them." '• 

But the very name of Jonah suggested to the ancient as it always does to the modem 
mind the adventure with the whale, which effectually swallows up his fame as a prophet and 
reformer; and when, after the death of Jesus, it came to be believed, that he had risen again 
on the third day, a new and striking similitude was found between him and Jonah, to whom 
in wholly other respects he had likened himself. 

a Matt, xxiv., 36. b Matt, xii., 41, 42 ; Luke xi., 30-32. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 415 

Sunday was the third day after the crucifixion. Neither 
his mother, nor Mary Magdalene, nor the sympathetic 
and affectionate women, who stood afar off at the cru- 
cifixion, after Peter, James, and John had fled, appeared 
to know anything about a resurrection. The two disciples 
speak of his death, and say that they had hoped it was 
he that would have redeemed Israel, but speak sadly, as 
if that hope had perished on his cross. Though they had 
even heard that his body was gone, and that angels, coming 
in a vision, had said that he was alive, they have evidently 
no such hope. When Peter and the other apostles are 
told that the body is not in the grave, and the two disci- 
ples are full of excitement in the belief that the gracious 
and learned scribe whom they met on their journey was 
Jesus himself, they are not helped toward belief by any 
the slightest anticipation in their own minds of such a 
happening as a rising of their Master from the dead. 

How is this to be accounted for? Had Jesus on four 
different occasions taken his followers aside, and with the 
plainest and most literal speech he ever used told them 
of his violent death, and of his coming again to life on the 
third day, and yet are none of them — not Peter, nor 
John, nor James, nor his own mother — found at the 
sepulchre, waiting with beating hearts to welcome him 
back to life? With a hope — and Jesus' plain words 
ought to have been an assurance to his disciples — that on 
the third day death would restore their leader and master 
to them, would the disciples have fled at his arrest, would 
Peter have denied him? And yet, strangest of all, while 
the disciples and family of Jesus have most evidently not 
the slightest expectation of his resurrection, though Jesus 
had told them plainly of it at least four times, repeating 
it the evening of his arrest, Matthew represents that the 
chief priests, who had not been told, who could only have 
heard of it from the lips of the disciples, seemed to be so 
aware of the resurrection, or of something that might be 
told to the credulous as such, that, with the assistance of 
the procurator's government, they had provided an extra- 
ordinary guard to watch over the sepultured body of 
Jesus ! a 

This utter faithlessness of the disciples in the resurrec- 

"Matt. xxvii., 62-66; xxviii., 4, 13-15. 



4l6 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

tion as an event to be expected, the narratives of Mark 
and Luke, in their attempt to account for it, confirm. 
The thought evidently occurs to the writers or to some 
transcriber or editor : If Jesus told beforehand all the 
particulars of his resurrection, why did his friends, to 
whom he made the communication, not look for his res- 
urrection ? Why did they receive its first intelligence 
with scornful unbelief? 

Mark says, when Jesus told his disciples that he was 
to be killed and rise the third clay, they understood not 
that saying, and were afraid to ask him. Luke declares : 
" The disciples understood none of these things, and this 
saying was hid from them." a How could it be hid, when 
so plainly told ? As Pharisees, they believed already 
in the resurrection of the dead. They believed their 
greatest prophets had gone to heaven in their bodily 
forms. They believed that the bones of the revered 
Elisha had given life to a dead man. Did they not be- 
lieve that Jesus by a word had recalled from death the 
ruler's young daughter in Galilee ? Can it be possible, if 
these men had stood by at Bethany a few days before, 
when Jesus had illustrated his ideas of the resurrection by 
calling their friend Lazarus from the tomb, that they 
could not understand how the man, who had shown such 
power over death, could not remain subject to it? 

If the estimate of the character of Jesus held by man- 
kind were made to depend solely upon the words and 
actions, which tradition imputes to him after his resurrec- 
tion, it is easy to perceive that it would not be so high 
as that now entertained. Fascinated and excited, as we 
may have been, with the earnest assurances of many 
apparently sincere people, that under difficult and capri- 
cious conditions they could establish between us and cer- 
tain celebrated persons, who have died, intelligible com- 
munications of question and answer, the general impres- 
sion made upon us by these communications has been of 
disappointment and indifference. When the spirit of 
Daniel Webster is presented to us by an impressible 
medium, it has none of the characteristic eloquence and 
simple cogency of statement, which characterized the 
great orator in his lifetime. Franklin comes back to 

o Mark ix., 31, 32 ; Luke ix., 45. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 417 

us with none of his practical sagacity ; Humboldt, with 
none of his comprehensive intelligence ; and Channing, 
with none of his elevation and purity of spirit. All the 
ghosts present themselves to us with their mental pecu- 
liarities cancelled and their individuality suppressed, 
steeped alike in the atmosphere of sentimentality and 
cant, in which, as in a dreary limbo, they seem to have 
lived. They assure us that they are happy ; but we 
never can quite understand how they can be, in such a 
sphere of wearisome vapidity and platitude. 

If the intercourse of Jesus with his followers after his 
death is an unverifiable tradition, then the undignified and 
unheroic conduct imputed to him, the feeble language, 
shorn of all the sententious pith and pungency of his 
known style, the insisting upon trivialities, and the prom- 
inence given to dogmas in which he had no credence are 
easily explicable. The narrators compromise Jesus in 
exactly the measure that they presume to report his 
words, and every sensitive reader feels instinctively that 
the majestic character suffers the least from him who 
undertakes to tell the least. 

Matthew, true to the confidence he has earned by the 
general simplicity, probability, and orderly sequence of 
his narrative, only puts into the mouth of Jesus these 
words already quoted : " Be not afraid : tell my brethren 
that they go to Galilee, and there shall they see me." In 
Galilee, he only said : " All power is given me in heaven 
and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, bap- 
tizing them in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things I 
have commanded you : and, lo, I am with you always to 
the end of the world." 11 

When Mark's story, as we now have it, obtains publica- 
tion, the communication of the risen Jesus has quite 
changed its character, and becomes, first, a chiding of his 
followers for their hardness of heart in not believing Mary 
Magdalene, who claimed to have seen him, and the two 
travellers to Emmaus, who had seen a person who did not 
look or speak like him, and who could not have been he, 
if he had truthfully declared that in Galilee his disciples 
should see him ; second, an assurance that belief and 

"Matt, xxviii., 10, 18-20. 



4l8 OPINIONS AXD CHARACTER OF JESUS 

baptism are necessary to salvation, and that real believers 
should be known by their power to cast out devils, to 
speak with new tongues, to take up serpents, and drink 
poison without harm, and to heal the sick by touching 
them.* 

Luke elaborates and extends every thing. The reas- 
suring word, " Be not afraid," becomes : " Why are ye 
troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts?" and, 
along with a showing of his wounded hands and feet, an 
emphatic avowal that what the disciples see is no spirit, 
but flesh and bones — a veritable corporeal presence. 
While they believed not for joy, he calls for food, further 
to assure them that he is no ghost, but has the appetite 
of a living man. Then follows an exposition of ancient 
scripture, and the repetition of the arguments he is said 
to have elaborated before the travellers to Emmaus, with 
the announcement that repentance and remission of sins 
are to be preached in his name among all nations, begin- 
ning at Jerusalem, and a distinct command that his dis- 
ciples, instead of going to Galilee to meet him, must tarry 
at Jerusalem, till they should be endued with power from 
on high. b 

Regarding all that is told of Jesus' acts and words after 
his death as the fruit of the Christian imagination justify- 
ing its excursions by a dogmatic purpose, it is legitimate 
to allude to the Johannic narrative, even if it was origi- 
nally produced as an avowed fiction. In that, the story 
of Jesus still expands itself, gathering the accretions the 
legend has received in more than a century's telling, and 
growing still more grotesque. Still, the dramatic power 
of the writer does not desert him. The narrative becomes 
in his hand as vivid, as picturesque, as personal, as are the 
conversations at Jacob's well with the Samaritan woman, 
or the minute details of the talk, that accompanied the 
restoration to sight of the man born blind. It is the man 
of constructive genius reciting his vivid poem alongside of 
the matter-of-fact annalist, and never losing his conscious- 
ness of poetic effect. Mary Magdalene touchingly rec- 
ognizes him as " Rabboni." Jesus looks at her with the 
familiar, affectionate address of "Mary." Not all the dis- 
ciples, only hard-hearted Thomas — if, after the gentle 

a Mark xvi , 15-18. b Luke xxiv., 3S-49. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 419 

reproaches before all the brethren, he is not ashamed to 
do it — must handle the Master's feet and hands, to learn 
that he is not a spirit. But Mary Magdalene must not 
even touch him. It is the requirement of the Johannic 
mind, that Jesus must give a reason for everything which 
he does or says ; so this reason is given for the prohibi- 
tion : "Because I have not yet ascended to my Father." 
Of course, the writer cannot tell why that should be a 
reason for not touching Jesus, and not a reason for touch- 
ing him ; nor why, if it were a reason why one disciple 
should not touch him, it was not a reason why the others 
should not handle him. John further says that Jesus 
breathed upon his disciples to impart to them the Holy 
Ghost, which Luke declares was not to be given till after a 
tarrying at Jerusalem after his ascension, and that he not 
only commissioned his disciples to preach and to baptize 
the repentant, but to remit or retain at their discretion all 
the sins of the human race, — an enormous concession of 
spiritual .authority. 11 

The details of the twenty-first chapter — by many good 
scholars believed to be a palpable corruption of the text 
of the original writing — containing the marvellous story 
of the great catch of fish through the divination of Jesus, 
the gross demand for food, and the eager precedence of 
Jesus in the passage to the prepared viands, the chaffing 
of Peter as a piece of after-dinner divertisement, and the 
gossiping fortune-telling of the fates of Peter and John, 
are not to be laid to the discredit of a composition on 
the whole so unique, consistent, and spiritual as the 
Fourth Gospel. 

In courts of law, forgeries so perfect as to deceive the 
most cunning experts have been exposed by discovering 
water-line impressions, which indicate that the paper upon 
which they were written was manufactured after the date 
they bear. In these imputed communications of Jesus, 
are there any indications of a similar anachronism ? In 
the three avowedly historic narratives there is one com- 
mand of the risen Jesus, as to the terms of which there 
is a tolerable accord among the writers ; that is, the com- 
mand to offer the privileges of the gospel of Jesus to all 
mankind. Matthew reports it: "Go teach all nations," 



420 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

baptizing them in the three divine names. Mark declares 
the word to have been : " Go ye into all the world, and 
preach the gospel to every creature" ; and Luke puts it 
into the form of an acknowledgment of a divine preordi- 
nation, that repentance and remission of sins should be 
preached in the name of Jesus among all nations, the first 
overture being to Jerusalem/ 

It was taking a liberty with language not warranted 
by the fidelity of history, to give this brief message of so 
revered a person as Jesus even such varied expression 
as this. But we are forced to recognize the perplexing 
fact, that the reporters come nearer to agreement on this 
than on any point. The founder of our faith appeared 
alive after his death, and spake to his trusted followers. 
What did he say f asks the eager world. We have not 
been able to agree, say those who report the stupendous 
event, except that in terms, about which the recollection 
of the witnesses differ, he did direct that the benefits of his 
gospel of a kingdom of heaven were to be offered ,to every 
human being, to all nations and to every creature. The 
words of Jesus, if all were said, were not too many for 
the memories of ordinary men ; but is it to be supposed 
that the only words, the substance of which all the wit- 
nesses were able to remember, should have been within 
half a dozen years after his death forgotten or disre- 
garded ? And yet, if they had been uttered, we are 
forced to that conclusion. 

For it seems from a narrative of the beginnings of Chris- 
tianity by Luke, one of the gospel writers, that a certain 
Roman military officer, named Cornelius, who was a de- 
vout Jewish proselyte, had heard of Peter preaching the 
doctrine of the resurrection and repentance, and desired 
to listen to him. Peter apparently knows nothing of a 
command of his risen Master to " Go into all the world, and 
preach the gospel to every creature." Peter does not think 
it lawful for him, a Jew, to seem to keep company with 
this devout proselyte of his own faith, or to visit a man 
who is of another nation. He avows frankly that he 
would not have presumed to do so, save that a voice of 
God had come to him in a vivid day vision, and thrice 
warned him that what God had cleansed was not to be 

a Matt, icxviii., tgj Markxvi., 15; Luke xxiv., 47. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 42 1 

deemed profane. Nor is he reassured that he has not 
committed an audacious sacrilege, till he further observes 
that the Gentile converts not only believed his Gospel, 
but attested the genuineness of a their faith by exhibition 
of the gift of tongues. 

Peter's authority, immense as it is, will not sanction so 
grave a departure from the rigid exclusiveness, which pre- 
vailed among the body of the disciples. They contended 
with and denounced him for a heretical practice. To 
overcome their prejudices he must needs tell them of his 
vision, and of the gift of tongues shared by Gentile be- 
lievers. b At length, they open their charity to embrace 
the alien brethren, their scrupulous minds reassured by 
remembered words of Jesus : " yohn indeed baptized yon 
with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost.' ' c 
The language was scarcely sufficient to warrant the belief 
that Jesus had ever cancelled his express declaration : 
" Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city 
of the Samaritans enter ye not." d If Jesus — a divine 
and immortal being — standing before Peter, had said in 
his hearing : " Go ye into all the world, and preach the 
gospel to every creature"* would he have waited for a 
vision to invite him to visit a devout and praying man ? 
and if the Church at Jerusalem, within less than ten 
years from the resurrection, had a tradition, that Jesus 
had explicitly commanded his gospel to be preached to 
every creature in all the world, would it have sought for 
a precedent in words spoken by Jesus in his lifetime, and 
only been able to find one in words in fact spoken not 
by Jesus but by John the Baptist ? f 

According to the same writer, when Paul began to 
preach, he recognized fully the prior rights of the Jews 
and their proselytes to the grace of the gospel. " Men 
and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and 
whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of 
this salvation sent." B When the Jews contradicted him 
and blasphemed, he with great boldness said to them : 
"It was necessary that the word of God should first have 
been spoken to you ; but seeing ye put it from you, and 
judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn 

»Actsx.,xi. t'Actsx..xi. cActsxi., 16. '1 Man. x., 5. 

e Mark xvi., 15. f Matt, iii., 16. g Acts xiii., 26. 



422 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

to the Gentiles."" And this bold step he justified on the 
authority of the Lord, speaking through the lips of the 
prophet Isaiah. b 

But the whole Church was disturbed by this innova- 
tion of Paul's, and came together to consult about it 
amid sharp dissensions. In the end, both Peter and 
James approved of the new departure — Peter appealing 
to the mode by which his own repugnance to the Gentiles 
had been overcome by his vision, and by the manifesta- 
tion among Gentile converts of spiritual gifts, and James 
finding a prophecy of Amos, that seemed to include the 
heathen in the mercies of the latter-day restoration. 

Now if there had been at this time, when the cruci- 
fixion of Jesus was a recent event, a tradition among any 
of the disciples, that the Lord, whom they expected soon 
from heaven to establish his kingdom, had appeared alive 
on his way to Paradise, expressly for the purpose of lay- 
ing upon his followers the solemn charge of preaching 
his gospel among all nations to every creature, and that 
his coming again could not take place till this work was 
done, would Paul or Peter or James have hesitated to 
invite the willing heathen to the privileges of the great 
salvation ? If they had presumed to give this invitation, 
would they have justified the act by citing obscure, equiv- 
ocal, and poetic passages from the Hebrew prophets, 
when the imperative and implicit commands of him, 
whose servants they claimed to be, were yet solemnly 
ringing in their ears ? 

It is true that Biblical critics have expressed grave mis- 
givings as to the historical accuracy of the narrative of 
the Acts, particularly of its earlier chapters. But that 
the expansion of the gospel pale, so as to embrace the 
faithful and penitent among the heathen, was resisted by 
the exclusive spirit of the Jewish Christians, and yielded 
to only after dissensions, that threatened the unity and 
the very existence of the new Church, is everywhere 
apparent in that part of the literature of the gospel, about 
the genuineness of which no questions have ever been 
raised. 

When an honest and irrepressible distrust of the authen- 
ticity of those communications imputed to the risen Jesus 

a Acts xi:i., 46, 47. b Isa. xlii., 6. c Acts xv., 7-21. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 423 

has, by considerations like this, been once fixed in our 
minds, we find much more to confirm our suspicion. 

We cannot understand why Jesus should have come 
back from the realms of death with an exaggerated esti- 
mate of the efficacy of mere baptism. Yet, so Matthew 
and Mark have represented him. a We have the best 
reason for believing that in his lifetime he thought lightly 
of that rite, as he did of Sabbath-keeping. He claimed 
that it was his distinction that he did not baptize, except 
metaphorically, and with the spirit. John, he said, bap- 
tizes with water, but my baptism is one of fire — of per- 
secution and suffering, which my heroic followers shall 
share. 6 Undoubtedly, the Fourth Gospel indicates a tra- 
dition that survived till the period of its composition 
when it declares that "Jesus himself baptized not, but his 
disciples :" c 

The doctrine of the Trinity, which never had the sanc- 
tion of Jesus' living testimony, gets an indorsement from 
his apparition, — an indication that it belongs to a develop- 
ment of the Christian scheme of mythology, later than 
those revelations of his Father in heaven, which character- 
ized the earliest preaching of the Galilean reformer. 

Of course, there was an admirable opportunity to gain 
for those doctrines, over which there had been vehement 
controversies in the Church during the earlier centuries, 
such sanction as could be derived from words imputed to 
Jesus — words all the more awful and weighty in that 
they were uttered after he had come back from death. 
Accordingly, we find, that Jesus is made to pronounce 
most emphatically against what was everywhere consid- 
ered the heretical theory of Paul, that the resurrection was 
not of the material body, that flesh and blood could not 
inherit the kingdom of God. " Handle me, and see ; for 
a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have," said 
the risen Jesus. What are we to believe, that Paul delib- 
erately set himself up to gainsay with his metaphysical 
speculations the plain declarations of his revered Master, 
or that, when Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians, 
there was no generally held tradition among the believers, 
that Jesus had uttered words like these ? 

"Matt, xxviii., 19; Mark xvi., 16. h Matt, xx., 22; Luke xii., 50. 
c John iv., 2. 



4-4 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

There was among the believers a more vital issue than 
concerned the Trinity, or the process and mode of the 
resurrection. The three evangelists have told us, that 
the gospel of Jesus, at least in its earliest proclamation, 
was an evangel of righteousness — that it related to con- 
duct, not the outward act indeed, but to the whole of con- 
duct, including the motive from which it proceeds ; that 
its great word was : He that doeth the will of God shall 
enter the kingdom of heaven. James, the brother of the 
Lord, the pillar of the young Church in Jerusalem, had 
insisted that, by good works, and not by faith, a man is 
justified." 

Paul had argued with great subtilty and warmth that 
by works of righteousness no man is justified, but by 
faith only ; that the good men had not lived by their 
virtues, but by their faith ; that faith produces good works, 
and, whether it does or not, its salutary influence can- 
not be lost. b There was much in the later conversations 
of Jesus himself to give sanction to the view of Paul. 
Peter had dissembled, siding sometimes with Paul, some- 
times with James. He too, like Paul, had had an expe- 
rience as a missionary among the heathen, that modified 
somewhat his Galilean orthodoxy. So there were schools 
among the disciples sharply inculpating each other. 

It is curious to see that Matthew, who gives most en- 
tirely the primitive gospel of righteousness, or good living, 
when he undertakes to summarize Jesus' last charge to 
his disciples in sending them forth among all nations, 
declares that it was to " teach them to observe all things 
whatsoever I have commanded you.'" That is, they were 
to preach a gospel of the observance of good works — 
not outward good works indeed, but good acts, done 
from sincere and pure motives — to do the will of God 
in hearing and doing the sayings of Jesus, that is the 
condition of salvation. 

Luke, more completely than either of the evangelists, 
wrote the Pauline Gospel; and, true to his school, he 
maintains, that what Jesus charged his disciples on 
taking leave of them was : " to preach in his name repent- 
ance and remission of sin" or the doctrine of faith, as the 
condition of salvation. While Mark, supposed to have 

a James ii., 24. •> Rom. iii.-vii. J Gal. ii., 11, 12. c Acts x., 28; xi., 3. 



LEGEND OF THE RESURRECTION 425 

written Peter's gospel, declares, or is made to declare, 
that Jesus distinctly insisted that baptism, as well as 
faith, is necessary to salvation, and that the genuineness 
of faith will be attested by miraculous and spiritual gifts. 
It shocks all ideas of historic fidelity to find each of 
these schools putting into the mouth of Jesus what it 
deems the essential article of its creed. 

Some basis of fact undoubtedly lay under the rumor of 
the resurrection. Paul, who was liable through physical 
weakness to powerful impressions of the imagination/ un- 
doubtedly saw an apparition of Jesus. b Manifestations to 
both sight and hearing of the personality of dead and 
absent individuals to certain peculiarly endowed nervous 
organizations are too well authenticated in history to be 
declared impossible. Such manifestations may be purely 
subjective, and do not necessarily imply the actual pres- 
ence of real persons. Spite of the constant correction by 
our waking thoughts of the illusions of sleep, our dreams 
have in them always the perfect sense of reality. 

What Paul saw on his journey to Damascus, some one 
or more of the disciples might have seen at Jerusalem, 
within three days after the death of Jesus. It is not nec- 
essary to conclude that any other than Mary Magdalene 
had such a vision, and the reputation of having been pos- 
sessed with seven devils indicates that she might have 
been constitutionally the subject of hallucinations. The 
rest of the story grew with the telling, and, since we see 
in the literature of the new religion the exact rate of its 
growth, it is legitimate to trace it back till it had only 
this basis of hallucination ; and we may now eliminate 
from it its improbable and conflicting adjuncts, till we 
arrive at its substratum of truth in a feminine vision. 

One theory is certain. Few men, that have ever lived, 
could be so little affected by death as Jesus of Nazareth. 
His life was a spiritual life : whatever he may himself 
have anticipated, his real kingdom was not a kingdom 
of this world ; the powers to which he appealed are 
the permanent forces of this universe. Only sordid and 
sensual men wholly die. The far-sighted poet, the saga- 
cious moralist, the wise philosopher, the genuine good 
man, when they die, do not cease to live. You might in 

■II. Cor. xti., 1-5. bActsxxvi., 13, 14. 



426 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

no corner of the universe find the identical form, within 
which their continued individuality is comprehended. 
When he lived, you might have found Shakspeare by 
getting introduced to his house in Stratford, and you 
would have been disappointed when you saw how common 
he looked, and how trivial was his speech. After his 
death — now two hundred years — he is more real. No 
Stratford house contains or limits his enormous person- 
ality, and no mind misses the complete effect of his 
emancipated genius. 

Jesus, when he lived, was a peasant of Galilee, laughed 
at and tortured by the mob of Jerusalem. After he died, 
his fame began to fill the world. No man ever lived, who 
has so much affected the development of history. His 
spirit pervades the world, and has been the companion, 
the support, and the solace of all suffering and devout 
souls. There is no sign that his spiritual influence 
will ever wane. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

INFLUENCE UPON HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY OF 
PAUL AND JOHN. 

"The fervid imagination of the East constructed Christian theology. It 
is not difficult to follow the gradual development of the creeds of the Church, 
and it is certainly most instructive to observe the progressive boldness with 
which its dogmas were expanded by pious enthusiasm. The New Testa- 
ment alone represents several stages of dogmatic evolution. Before the first 
followers of Jesus had passed away, intricate systems of dogma and m\sti- 
cism began to prevail. His disciples, who had so often misunderstood his 
teachings during his life, piously distorted them after his death. His simple 
lessons of meekness and humility were soon forgotten. With lamentable 
rapidity, the elaborate structure of ecclesiastical Christianity, following stere- 
otyped lines of human superstition, and deeply colored by the Alexandrian 
philosophy, displaced the simple morality of Jesus." — Supernatural Religion. 

"No religion is born complete: the interpreter is as necessary to it as 
the interpreted ; the society that realizes the ideal, as the ideal that is to be 
realized. And the process of interpretation or realization, while it may 
seem one of formal or even radical change, is yet one of real, though 
variously conditioned, historical development." — Contemporary Review. 

If Jesus were the sole factor in that complex problem 
which we call Christianity, its solution would be compar- 
atively simple ; but such is very far from being the case. 
Not only have we to discover what were the ideas of 
Jesus, but also how much that is taught and believed 
under the authority of his name is the accretion of the 
centuries since his age. Thought and speculation, mak- 
ing use of the moral and spiritual experience of man- 
kind, have ever busied themselves in the effort to find 
how best to live, how to meet the demands which an 
ever-expanding moral sense makes upon our wills, to 
repress evil ways and evil thoughts, and to bring our 
whole conduct, external and internal, under the law and 
order of righteousness. Men of great spiritual insight, 
enamoured of virtue, # devoted to the love of God and 
the service of mankind, have risen from age to age, who 
have been able to find fresh and deeper meanings in old 
formulas of faith, and to burnish with an ideal lustre the 



428 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

rude and imperfect conceptions of sainted prophets and 
teachers. The Christianity of to-day — it is said to its 
glory, not to its reproach — is infinitely better, purer, 
and more adapted to the wants of humanity, than was the 
Christianity of Jesus, of Paul, and of John ; because it 
has added to their discoveries the spiritual experiences 
of good men for nearly two thousand years. To indi- 
cate and unfold all these accretions, whereby the cultus 
which names itself after Jesus, and of which he was the 
prime source and spirit, has expanded to the capacities 
of civilized and enlightened men, would be to undertake 
a work that would task the research of a lifetime — to 
write, what only in these last ages has commanded the 
attention of scholars, the history of civilization, the evolu- 
tion of the moral sense. 

A more modest and restricted task has been proposed 
in these chapters ; that is, to try from the most authentic 
traditions to discover who Jesus of Nazareth was, what 
was his character, and what enterprise he courage- 
ously sacrificed his life to promote. But the tradition 
having been long ago lapsed from the memory of men, 
or being preserved in faiths and forms of uncertain 
origin and authority, the world has been forced to 
study primitive Christianity in its Scriptures, and par- 
ticularly in those Scriptures, which contain its most 
authentic traditions and its earliest expositions of doc- 
trine. For us of this age, neither Jesus speaks nor any 
of his confidential friends and disciples. If we would 
know aught of him, we are driven to literature, — to the 
records that survive ; and these indicate, not so much 
what Jesus was in himself, as the impression that he 
made upon the minds of the Galilean peasants among 
whom he lived, and of a few magnanimous Jews, who 
either witnessed or learned, after the event, the circum- 
stances of his public trial and death at Jerusalem. This 
literature embraces the free-hand and evidently exagger- 
ated narratives called the Synoptic Gospels, and the Acts 
of the Apostles, the controversial and hortatory Epistles 
of the apostles and first preachers, and the dogmatic 
drama called John's. 

The first of this series has been the basis of the studies 
and discussions embraced in these essays. Their struct- 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 429 

ure is simple, their style direct. There is no attempt 
in them at eloquence, pathos, or philosophy. They are 
in their genuine substance authentic reports — unhappily, 
too remotely connected with the events they record to be 
accurate — of what was believed, not by scholars and per- 
sons of responsibility, but by common men, who had 
come to regard Jesus as a supernatural person, and his 
career on earth as a new divine revelation. But what is 
to be remarked in reference to these narratives is, that 
they are pure reports. The authors neither put their 
personality nor the weight of their opinions into their 
writings. Authorship never so slightly magnified itself, 
nor betrayed its consciousness. It is unknown who wrote 
these narratives. It is not claimed that they are written 
by any persons upon any commission to write, or that the 
names of the writers, even if correctly imputed, give any 
special weight of authority to their testimony. But their 
very simplicity is their chief excellence ; and they hold 
up to all ages the picture of Jesus, as it shone in the 
minds of his enthusiastic adherents, without the shadow 
of the personality of the writers to eclipse or obscure it. 

But Christianity found greater instrumentalities to 
propagate itself than these humble annalists, or it would 
never have been heard of outside of Palestine. Two men 
of greatest genius were embraced among its early con- 
verts, who, for the influence they have exerted on the 
development of the new religion, may rank as peers with 
Jesus himself. These men were Paul, and the unknown 
author of the Fourth Gospel. It is necessary, in order to 
complete the sketch undertaken in these papers, briefly to 
consider the character and work of each. 

As soon as it became probable that the stupendous 
cataclysm, the foreboding of which both saddened and 
inspired the last days of Jesus, was not to occur, that 
the course of history was to go on, mainly in the old 
order, not seriously disturbed or accelerated by the ideas 
that he had promulgated, then whoever could obtain a 
prominent place in the literature of the new epoch was 
sure of power and growing influence in all time. Jesus 
was not a writer. His teachings were all oral, and he 
had been utterly improvident in securing any trust- 
worthy record 01 them. Besides, they had been largely 



430 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

provisional, and adapted to a transient period of waiting 
for a revolution, that was to overthrow all the relations of 
men to each other, and to the world in which they lived. 
His feeling was that the time is at hand. Those few 
whom he had warned of the catastrophe, that should 
make all things new, need not write his warning." He 
would come again. Every eye should see him ; and the 
brightness of his appearing would be as the lightning 
shining from the east to the west. 

But the coming again was unwarrantably delayed. 
Then, different accounts began to obtain currency of 
what he had said about coming again. The witnesses 
of his works, the auditors of his words, were beginning, 
one after the other, to die ; and those, who told of him 
at second-hand, began to mix extravagant and trivial 
things with the accounts of his works of healing, and to 
report his solemn counsels with admixtures of their own 
prepossessions. Full late and inadequately, — perhaps 
after the death of the twelve apostles, — obscure persons 
— mere volunteers, like Luke — began to collect the 
marvellous stories together in private letters to their 
friends ; and they upon whom had fallen the oversight 
of the faith selected from among the mass of volunteer 
biographies of Jesus, those which seemed to them the 
most decent and most edifying, and rejected the rest as 
heretical. This work had evidently not been done while 
Paul preached and wrote. So Jesus got into literature, 
and got himself accredited to posterity, not by his own 
genius, but by the admiring after-thought of a few un- 
pretentious and unknown men, kindred to the first Gal- 
ilean disciples, and heritors of their faith. 

But Paul, who contributes more than any one mind to 
the canon of the New Testament scriptures, is a man of 
superior order. He is something of a scholar, and accom- 
plished, according to the standard in vogue in his time, 
in both rhetoric and logic. He is thoroughly devout and 
orthodox, declaring himself to the last a Pharisee of the 
Pharisees, and holding his faith in Jesus in strict subjec- 
tion to his belief in Moses, and to a conception of the 
universe that made the Hebrew Jehovah the Creator and 
God of the world, — a conception that recognized the peo- 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 43 1 

pie of his own race as the chosen favorites of heaven, and 
their historic fortunes and destinies as, in a special sense, 
a divine providence. Upon these rooted and inveterate 
prepossessions he had engrafted, by a subtle and arbitrary 
speculation, the economy of a Messiah, a kingdom of 
heaven, a general proselytism of the heathen, a restora- 
tion of Israel to its favor and primacy. But the glory of- 
the chosen race, enlarged by the privileges of faith, was 
to be shared with the favored of the Gentiles, and was to 
be established in the New Jerusalem, whose coming king 
he hoped in his own lifetime to welcome. 

To these grand ideas and hopes he brought a devotion 
and enthusiasm that persecution only kindled, a tireless 
zeal, and an intense ambition, that drove him from one 
end of the Mediterranean to the other, until at his death 
the religion, which in the lifetime of Jesus was a despised 
provincialism that could not command a respectful hear- 
ing in Jerusalem, had established its churches in the cul- 
tivated cities of Greece and Rome, and had the civilized 
world waiting for its law. 

Paul's right to be considered a man of transcendent 
genius — one of the great intellectual forces that has 
largely contributed to the culture of mankind — rests 
upon the fragments that literature has preserved of his 
letters and speeches. The Epistle to the Romans, be- 
lieved by Renan to have been a circular letter prepared 
for all the principal churches he had established, is a sum- 
mary of the great apostle's theological conceptions, and 
sets forth his theory of the divine economy and provi- 
dence. It is dialectic rather than hortatory, — an argu- 
ment rather than a revelation ; but its cogency and 
eloquence fairly entitle it to an honorable place among 
the sacred scriptures of the world. It is not the highest 
order of composition. It can never touch the heart like 
the old Hebrew Psalms, nor stimulate to noble self-denials 
and daring efforts of virtue, like the Sermon on the 
Mount. Controversial writings, of which this is a mas- 
terly specimen, rarely survive the transient questions, 
whose interest calls them forth. But there is compre- 
hended in this great argument so many ideas of universal 
and permanent import, that it has outlasted the local and 
national conceptions which gave it its basis and reason 



432 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

of being. It has not failed of appreciation. Read in the 
larger sense of a competent philosophy, with the copious 
interlineations with which a subtle and trained criticism, 
stimulated by superstitious reverence, has enlarged and 
generalized its naked formulas, it has justly taken its' 
place among the worthy contributions to the metaphysical 
science of the world. 

In his development of the method of the resurrection, 
in his first letter to his Corinthian converts, Paul displays 
the powers and resources of his speculative imagination, 
so that nearly all the hopes of Christendom of a life after 
death are built upon his assurances and reasonings. 
Either Jesus had far less creative and suggestive fancy 
than Paul, or — what is possible — he deemed the specu- 
lations in which Paul seemed to delight of little value in 
themselves, and, on the whole, enervating in their influ- 
ence on conduct. 

In the same letter, in the midst of much practical and 
sensible advice, — on the whole depreciatory of those spir- 
itual gifts of tongues and of prophecy, which seemed to 
have marked the beginnings of a new faith, — he breaks 
out into a glorification of charity, as greater than alms- 
giving, more estimable than faith, and more to be desired 
than gifts of tongues, power of miracles, or fidelity of 
discipleship. This placing of charity, which is human in 
origin and in object, before all correctness of doctrine, all 
powers of the intellect, and all manifestations of inspira- 
tion, is fairly in the spirit of Jesus, who declared that love 
to God and man is the whole substance of the law, and 
was level with the highest insight of the later prophets 
of the Israelites, who had declared that God loved mercy 
and justice more than worship and sacrifice. The substi- 
tution in the late revision of love for charity may be a 
more literal translation of the original word ; but it less 
correctly expresses the thought of Paul. Love belongs 
in its most concrete sense to the attractions of sex — to 
those natural instincts that prefer offspring and kindred. 
Wider than this, the word defines the preferences of 
friendship ; and, highest of all, the devotion, adoration, 
and awe which under all forms of religion a few exalted 
spirits have felt toward their ideal of God or of the gods, 
growing sometimes from a controlling sentiment to an 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 433 

uncontrollable ecstasy. Charity, as Paul eulogizes it, is 
not quite either of these. He defines it himself in the 
familiar language, "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; 
vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave 
itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily pro- 
voked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but in 
the truth ; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth 
all things." a It is a certain geniality of character, that 
makes a man in the best sense, and to the best persons 
agreeable, — tolerant of their conduct, tolerant of their 
opinions — disposed to see the best side of men and 
things. In fine, for want of a better word, it is the 
quality of being a gentleman. 

This chapter of charity sets forth Paul's ideal of a per- 
fect manhood. It was the standard of excellence, which, 
with the impediment of a fierce impetuosity of temper, 
exasperated by the suspicions and accusations of men, 
participators with him in a sacred enterprise, he tried to 
attain, and toward which he more and more approximated. 
It is less descriptive of the vehement and intense spirit 
of Jesus, of the radical thoroughness of his methods of 
dealing with the sins of men and of the world, and of 
the intolerance and exclusiveness with which he regarded 
all other reformers, and all systems of culture other than 
his own. In certain features indeed, the contrast between 
the two pictures is quite striking. Jesus had said, "If 
you have faith, you might say to this mountain, be re- 
moved to the sea, and nothing should be impossible for 
you." Paul declares: "Though I have all faith, so that 
I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am 
nothing." " Strive to enter in at the strait gate," Jesus 
exhorted. It is better to enter life with the loss of a 
hand, of an eye, than to be cast whole into hell. But, 
supplements Paul, though I give my whole body to be 
burned, and have not charity, I have made a bootless sac- 
rifice. " Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and 
thou shalt have treasure in heaven," was the thorough 
method of the Master. Nay, interposes the wiser disci- 
ple, " If I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and have 
not charity, it profit 'cth me nothing." 

There are two fragments, which in the judgment of 

» I. Cor. xiii., 4-7. 



434 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

many are better expositions of the genius and heart of 
Paul, than even these, although their authenticity is 
less well attested. These are the touching and eloquent 
words he addressed to his converts at Ephesus, when, on 
his way to Jerusalem, he became involved in the contro- 
versy and accusations, that drew after them his -arrest and 
imprisonment, and ultimately his death," and his sermon 
at Athens. b Both of these were unwritten speeches ; and 
as Luke, or the writer assuming that name, nowhere indi- 
cates any literary capacity himself to originate such elo- 
quence or comprehensiveness, there is no circumstance 
to invalidate the genuineness of these reports, except the 
difficulty necessarily attending the reproduction in their 
identical language of the form or substance of the dis- 
course either by a listener of good memory or by the 
speaker himself. The probability, therefore, inclines 
quite strongly to the substantial accuracy of the report. 

The farewell address at Ephesus is chiefly noteworthy 
for its pathetic tenderness and eloquence, and for its 
self-conscious but pardonable assertion of the indomi- 
table courage and devotion of the heroic apostle. The 
apology spoken in the Areopagus is especially remarkable 
as a manifestation of the liberality of Paul's culture and 
the catholicity of his charity, and of that tact, which, as 
a man of the world, he possessed in an eminent degree, to 
adapt himself to the modes of thought of races and men 
alien to his own lineage and training. Our admiration is 
enhanced by the picturesque grandeur of the situation, — 
the new religion with all the future before it, represented 
by its most eloquent and cultivated convert, confronting, 
amid the most splendid monuments of antiquity, the old 
religion and the old philosophy, represented by the men 
who had given them their best exposition and examplars. 
This is Paul at his best. It must be confessed that he 
discloses qualities both of mind and character less admi- 
rable. He is contentious and passionate. His resent- 
ments are sudden, and not well under his control ; and he 
launches them hotly and hastily against men, whom he 
loved and esteemed. He himself is the first to feel their 
recoil, and his apologies are profuse and sincere. He 
is self-conscious even to boasting, and, while believing 

» Acts xx., 17-38. b Acts xvi., 22-31. ell. Cor. ii., 1-5; vii., 8; Gal. i., ii. 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 435 

that he is depreciating himself, always leaves the impres- 
sion that he is fully aware of the value of his services 
and the power of his intellect and presence. If he seems 
ever to humble himself, it is almost with a piteous appeal 
to others to vindicate and exalt him. He ever magnifies 
his office, and insists, against all questionings, upon the 
prestige of his apostleship. a 

He liked to recall, what seemed to him the highest dis- 
tinction, his training in the schools of Jerusalem. b Not- 
withstanding the bigotry and nationality of its teaching, 
" the feet of Gamaliel'" was, in the first century, the best 
school in which an enthusiastic devotee of wisdom like 
Paul could study the problems of philosophy and religion. 
He is daring in his flights of speculative philosophy, and, 
more ambitiously than Jesus himself, confronts and en- 
deavors to solve the whole mystery of God and the crea- 
tion. We catch in his illustrations oftener than elsewhere 
intimations of his ideas about physical laws, and find 
that they by no means agree — as none of the surmises 
of his wisest contemporaries agreed — with the results 
arrived at by the observations and experiments of sci- 
ence. We are perplexed at his metaphysics, and find 
that his philosophy of the faculties and processes of the 
human mind are as foreign to the best teachings of our 
times as is his philosophy of nature. Even where his 
great strength lay, in his dialectics, we are unable to 
surrender our judgments to his arguments, because some- 
times we see no axiom or accredited fact at the bottom 
of the enormous assumption of his premises, and a non 
seqnitur where he attempts to overwhelm us with the 
assurance of his conclusions. Often too, where the 
premise is tenable, and the conclusion legitimate, the 
intermediate ratiocination is either fallacious or sophis- 
tical. 11 

Comprehensive as was the survey which he took of 
mind and matter, of things visible and things invisible, 
of the past and the future — and it was much wider than 
any of his fellow-laborers in the gospel were capable of — 
it was still the comprehensiveness of a Jew fettered by 
the prejudices of his race and sect ; and, doubtless, when 
he tried to convert the philosophers of the Areopagus 

»II. Cor. x.,xi. b Actsxxii, 3. c Rom. ii., iz; vii., 7-9; v., 13. dGal. iii., iv., v. 



43^ OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

by turning upon them a quotation from one of " their 
own poets," he felt for Socrates and Plato and the sub- 
limest speculations and purest precepts of the Stoics 
and Epicureans all the contempt and pity which might 
be expected to fill the breast of a Pharisee, skilled in the 
traditions of his school, and imbued with the ideas of 
Hillel and the most virtuous of the scribes. This Jewish 
cultus was the basis of all his thought. The vision of 
Jesus, which he scorned to authenticate — as he might 
have done — by communion with the surviving kinsmen 
and intimate friends of the Master who had frequented 
the mountains and lake-sides of Galilee, did not so much 
eclipse and supplant his hereditary Pharisaism, as adapt 
itself to it by a certain complicated order and succession, 
which the Jewish Christians of his time disowned, and 
which the converts from alien religions could never quite 
comprehend." When an overpowering vision, shining 
with a brightness that darkened noonday, seemed to 
announce in his astonished ears : " / am yesus whom 
thou persecutest," these must have been the reflections of 
that vehement, fierce, but tender and deeply repentant 
heart of Paul : Jesus in heaven ! A vision, not of the 
Jehovah of our fathers nor one of his angels, but of 
this Galilean malefactor whom I have hated and 
maligned, now exalted to companionship with God ! 
Paul discloses to us how this vision modified all his 
theologic ideas. Jehovah does not disappear, nor Moses, 
nor the law, nor the old economy of a chosen race ; but 
the purpose of Jehovah, cherished from the first, to exalt 
his people, and through them to subdue and conciliate all 
the nations of men, takes a new impulse and a new direc- 
tion, and uses a new and more divine instrumentality. 
For three years, in solitude, away from the haunts of 
men, aloof from the fishermen, who are repeating to 
admiring listeners the parables and the stories of the 
exorcization of devils, Paul studies the scheme of divine 
providence and world-ordering, until he can find in it a 
place for the newly revealed divine being, who has 
spoken to him from heaven. b At length, he perceives 
the order and symmetry of the whole scheme of salvation, 
and how Jesus was foretold by the prophets, and was the 

a Rev. ii., iii. ; II. Pet. iii., 16; I. Cor. iii., 12, 13. &GaL i., 17-20. 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 437 

great antetype, toward whom the mysteries of the ancient 
rites and sacrifices pointed, — the providential man, who 
comprehended in himself the whole purpose of God, and 
accomplished the fulfilment of all the promises to his 
nation ; and how, besides, he was the seed of Abraham, 
in whom all the nations df the earth should be blessed. 
So Christianity clothed itself in a Hebrew costume, and 
went out among the perplexed people of the heathen 
world clothed with the ideas and giving its sanction to 
the mythology of the older religion, which was foremost 
in persecuting and opposing it. Its literary rather than 
its traditional form was that in which it survived, and its 
literary form was mainly shaped by the constructive 
genius of Paul. 

Paul had unbounded confidence in his dialectics. What 
he had worked out as a syllogism for himself he believed 
he could make every mind accept. His whole method of 
propagandism was argumentation. He believed that, with 
space to deploy his premises, his firstly and secondly, he 
could force the most obdurate and sceptical reasoner to his 
conclusions. Accordingly, he is nothing, if not logical. 
On the largest and smallest occasion, he is always formi- 
dable and ponderous with the weight of his polemic armor. 
He seeks to conquer faith, not as Jesus did, by direct 
appeals to the moral sense, intuitive of right and truth, 
but by mining under the outworks of the understanding. 
He is the father of all the schoolmen, the great prototype 
of dogmatism ; and his influence and his school have been 
in the world for eighteen centuries, often drowning with 
the clamor of disputation the voice of him, that never gave 
reason or logical basis for primal truths, but spoke never- 
theless with authority, and not as the scribes. 0. 

It is not surprising that Paul should have so completely 
ignored the doctrines and the personality of his Master, 
when it is considered that he knew Jesus only as a vision, 
and that he drew all his rhetorical illustrations from the 
Hebrew Scriptures, working out the details of the new 
order of things, under what he called the dispensation of 
grace, in distinction from the dispensation of law, that 
had preceded it, and from manifestations of the divine 
character and purposes, in the, to him, historical inci- 

»Matt. vii., 28, 29. 



438 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

dents in the fortunes of the patriarchs, heroes, kings, 
and prophets of Israel. For, though we find much con- 
cerning Adam and Abraham, Sarah and Rachel, Moses 
and Elijah, in his hortatory writings, addressed, in part 
at least, to intelligent Greeks and Romans, in whose 
mind such mythical and national names must have been 
a contemptible reminiscence, we find very few allusions 
to the sayings of Jesus or to the incidents of his life. 

Paul is too great a man to leave any work of his incom- 
plete. It was the necessity of his mind that he should 
give the evangel he preached a balanced and symmetrical 
form. So, while he seems to have ignored the ethical 
system of Jesus, he gives a complete ethical system of 
his own. If it be asked, what did Paul do to entitle him 
to be ranked as the equal and collaborator of Jesus in 
originating what is called Christianity, the answer must 
be ; first, he constructed its theology ; second, he modi- 
fied the rigor of the ethical precepts of Jesus, so as to 
adapt them to the exigencies of this worW — to some 
kind of relation to the existing and developing political 
society. 

Paul would have ' resented with eloquent indignation 
any insinuation that he lacked deference to the name 
and authority of the Master, whom he almost deified. 
He placed Jesus in so exalted a sphere above all men, all 
angels, all principalities and powers, a that it was an easy 
and natural transition for the Church of a later age to 
arrive at the dogma of his equality and co-essentiality 
with God. But it is apparent now that, in the very 
measure that Paul exalted Jesus to heaven, he banished 
him from the world, and left it the more open to his own 
constructive and innovating control. With a Christ whose 
only memory was an apparitional interview on the road 
to Damascus, whose activity was shut out from the world 
by the beatific glories of the upper skies, he could work 
harmoniously. But, when we remember the aloofness 
which the great apostle ever maintained toward the con- 
fidential companions and kinsmen of Jesus — the men 
who kept the tradition of his words and works — the con- 
jecture intrudes upon us, that he would have found the 
world too narrow for himself and the prophet of Nazareth, 

a Phil, ii., y-n; Eph. i., 20, 21; Col. i., 15-20. 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 439 

and that the latter would have encountered in him a more 
intractable temper than Peter's, whose headstrong im- 
petuosity alternated, as Paul's never did, with a childlike 
and utter contrition and submission." 

There is related in the Acts of the Apostles an inci- 
dent of adventure befalling Paul on the travels he under- 
took by land and sea to propagate the faith to which he 
had devoted himself, which fitly illustrates both his char- 
acter and work. b He was nearing Malta on his voyage to 
Rome under arrest, taking an appeal to the emperor. 
There had been three days ot tempest, and in the supreme 
hour of peril a panic ensued. The soldiers, the active 
men, whose aid was necessary to save the ship and pas- 
sengers, are about to desert in the boats. Both the mari- 
time and the military commanders appear to have lost 
their authority. Just in this emergency, a hero appears 
from an unexpected quarter. This scholar, this fanatical 
preacher, this tiresome theological disputant, a prisoner 
too, exhibit^ powers of command and of self-control, that 
make him the sovereign of the occasion. His assurance 
that safety is possible allays the fears of the terrified voy- 
agers ; and, through his advice, order and discipline are 
restored. The passengers, worn with sleeplessness and 
fatigue, refresh themselves with food, and with instinctive 
recognition of his superiority place themselves under his 
control. Though the ship is wrecked, every life is saved. 

Paul found the young Church in a like peril. Its 
founder and leader had perished on the cross. The 
special enterprise, upon which he had staked all, had thus 
far palpably miscarried. His latest words had been of 
his own speedy coming, and of catastrophe and doom for 
the world. The coming of the Son of Man, he said, 
shall be like the coming of the flood, sweeping away the 
unforeboding children of men in the midst of their eating 
and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. Your 
Lord, he had said, will come in an hour when ye think 
not, and will cut down the careless, drunken, and conten- 
tious servants, and consign them to a place of weeping 
and gnashing of teeth. The cruel spectacle of Jesus' 
murder had enhanced the panic. What wonder that the 
common people were ready to believe the world itself 

• Gal. ii., 5. b Acts xxvii. c Matt, xxiv., 37-39, 44, 48-51. 



44-0 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

could not outlive so great a crime ; and, when Peter began 
to exhort the multitude to save themselves from the doom 
that awaited that " untoward generation" they were cut to 
the heart, and cried out, " Men and brethren, what shall 
we do f" a 

Paul shared the alarm, and lived in the expectation that 
the catastrophe, which was to overwhelm the world, 
would befall in his own lifetime. 15 But Paul was heroic, 
and never lost his presence of mind. Since the departure 
of Jesus, the world had endured for twenty years. It may 
still endure twenty years. First of all, he said, let us 
have discipline, and perhaps it were as well to take some 
refreshments. " Set thy house in order, for thou shalt surely 
die " was the prophetic warning to an ancient Jewish king. 
Paul was of those orderly souls who would set his house 
in order, and, as far as he could, set the world in order, 
and have it lie down covered with decency to await the 
conflagration, in which it was soon to perish. 

But, first of all, the tangled thread of providence must 
be unravelled. The world is the creation of God, and 
men are his creatures. What are God's plans ? What 
fate has he appointed for men? To what consummation 
is this mystery of human life and world-history tending? 
To fit Jesus, his death, his resurrection, into the divine 
plan, to find a place for him in a scheme of providence 
that included Adam, Abraham, and Moses, that completed 
and fulfilled the law, and left a superfluous grace for the 
faithful among the Gentiles, — this was the intellectual 
task, toward which the very nature of Paul's mind im- 
pelled Mm. 

Accordingly, we find in Paul's writings, not indeed the 
connected scheme of salvation that fettered the Scottish 
and New England mind of the last century, before hu- 
manitarianism and science had assaulted it, broken its 
sequences, and marred its integrity, but links of all that 
concatenation of dogmas, — the masterpiece of scholas- 
tic ratiocination, — at which, in their turn, Augustine, 
Anselm, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards have wrought. 
These links may be briefly indicated in these terms : 
the eternity and self-existence of God ; the eternal rela- 
tionship to him of a Son who was born into the world as 

» Acts ii., 37, 40. b I. Thess. iv., 15 ; I. Cor. xv., 51. 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 44I 

the man Jesus ; the creation of the world, with the 
heaven overarching it, for the use of man and the glory 
of God ; and the creation in innocence of a primal pair, 
whose speedy sin involved all their posterity, the whole 
race of men, in guilt, condemnation, and death ; the sep- 
aration from the general wicked of the descendants of 
Abraham, and the attempt — on the whole, unsuccessful 
— to rescue them by the teachings of a divinely enacted 
law, and by a system of sacrifices in no value of them- 
selves, but efficacious, in that they represented a sacrifice 
of the Son of God, to be afterward made for the sins of 
all that believe on him ; the coming into the world in the 
fulness of time of this Son of God, to grow up a servant 
and a man of sorrow, who, being killed, ostensibly by the 
wickedness and malignity of men, was in reality self- 
delivered to death by the eternal decrees of God to be a 
propitiation for the sins, first of the chosen race, then of 
all men who believe, whose faith is to be accepted in lieu 
of obedience to the divine law — an obedience which, 
from the innate wickedness of mankind, had been in 
reality from the first impossible. 

This comprehensive and elaborate system might have 
been learned at the feet of Gamaliel. Such ambitious 
speculations suited admirably the philosophic genius of 
Pharisaism. We. only know that Paul could not have 
learned it from Jesus : first, because he emphatically dis- 
claims all knowledge of the philosophic, ethical, or theo- 
logical ideas of Jesus, through the only source from 
which they could have been learned, the twelve wit- 
nesses ; tt and, second, because there is not a trace of this 
system in the authentic tradition of the doctrines of 
Jesus. Indeed, the surprise is that, considering how far 
Paul's zeal had impregnated the new faith with ■ such 
ideas, we find so few traces of them in the preserved dis- 
courses of Jesus, memorized for us and committed to 
writing, after Paul's time, by believers, some of whom 
are believed to have been Paul's disciples. 

The innovations introduced by Paul in the ethical sys- 
tem of Jesus are quite obvious to all who read his pre- 
served writings. As has been seen, the attitude of Jesus 
toward the state was, on the whole, hostile. He seems 



442 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

to have hesitated whether he could so far recognize the 
legality of the Roman power as to pay taxes to it. " Of 
whom do the rulers of the earth," he asked his friends, 
" exact tribute, of their own children or of strangers ? " 
They said: "Of strangers." Then are children exempt 
from tribute, he concluded." But to resist physical power 
was contrary to his idea, that all exactions were to be sub- 
mitted to. While asserting his right, he would not insist 
upon it. He that had commanded that the blow of the 
private ruffian was to be submitted to without retaliation, 
and the depredation of the. private spoiler was to be borne 
without reprisal, could not resent the claim of the public 
tax-gatherer, backed, as it was, by the power of imprison- 
ment. So he paid his tax under protest, and said : " If 
you have recognized Caesar's sovereignty by using 
Caesar's coin, you may use it also in paying for the gov- 
ernment you have recognized." b But, to his view, the 
rulers of this world did not belong to God's order. They 
were the wolves. c Caesar's department is one thing, 
God's is another. Paul taught quite otherwise : that the 
powers that be are ordained of God, to which every soul 
must be subject, and that to resist them was to resist the 
ordinance of God, and to incur damnation. d 

Jesus invited men away from worldly care and labor, 
and told them that all anxiety for subsistence was faith- 
less and useless. 6 Paul, on the other hand, was himself 
thrifty and industrious, that he might not be a charge 
upon his converts, and might have the means of joining 
them in gifts to the saints. He exhorted men to industry 
and diligence in business, and declared that the idle and 
improvident should be left to starvation/ 

Jesus excluded .rich men from the kingdom of heaven, 
and imposed as the first condition of discipleship the 
abandonment of all property. 5 Paul admitted rich be- 
lievers to his churches, and only required that they be 
liberal in charities out of the good gifts God had given 
them to enjoy. h 

Jesus, as he thought it a slight effort of virtue to ab- 
stain from murder, because even causeless anger toward 

a Matt, xvii , 24-27. b Matt, xxii., 20, 21. Matt, x., 16, 18. d Rom. xiii., 1, a. 

eMatt. vi., 25-34. 'Rom. xii., n; II. Thess. iii., 7-12. 

gMatt xix., 21, 23, 24. h I. Tim. vi., 17, 18. 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 443 

a brother was of itself the germ of murder, had said : " If 
ye love them that love you, what merit is there in it? 
The publicans do as much as that." a Paul, recognizing 
the fact that many men find it easy to forgive their ene- 
mies, and are torpid and patient under insults, who, in 
daily intercourse with their families and friends, do not 
always abstain from petty annoyances and affronts, nor 
preserve themselves from that peevishness or censorious- 
ness, that so much embitters social life, added this noble 
precept : " Be kindly affectioned one to another, in honor 
preferring one another." b Paul did not pretend to accept 
Jesus' principle of non-resistance to wanton evil, but sub- 
stituted for the precept to resist not evil the more prac- 
tical one : " If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live 
peaceably with all men." c Like Jesus, Paul exhorts to 
patience in tribulation, constancy in prayer, the retaliation 
of blessing for cursing, sympathy for those in sorrow, 
humility of spirit, and the overcoming of enmity by per- 
sistent and profuse well-doing,' 1 though his language seems 
neither quoted from, nor suggested by Jesus ; and, where 
he seeks to strengthen his authority by a quotation, it is 
not the Sermon on the Mount, but the older Scripture, 
that he cites. 

Jesus was out of relation to all the political authorities, 
the social customs, the merely conventional and civic 
obligations of his time. Paul was politic, and in a cer- 
tain sense conventional. He respected human laws as 
divine ordinances. He vindicated his rights and privi- 
leges as a Roman citizen, and his rank and birth as a 
respectable and orthodox Pharisee of the lineage of Ben- 
jamin. He treated with uniform courtesy and deference 
the High Priest, the viceroy of Caesar, the military com- 
manders, and the men and women, whose learning and 
social position gained his respect. His comprehensive 
direction was : " Render to all men their dues, whether of 
tribute, custom, fear, or honor." c It was to have been ex- 
pected that a man carefully and religiously reared, like 
Paul, should represent in his conduct and in his prin- 
ciples the highest virtue of his age. The cultus of the 
Jewish people, under the tuition of the Pharisees, was one 

»Mntt. v., 46. bRom. xii., 10. c Rom. xii., 18. 

d Rom. xii., 6-21. c Rom. xiii., 7. 



444 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

that would favorably compare with the moral standard of 
the most advanced people of modern times. 

The New Testament traditions introduce us to an age 
and people generally devout, chaste, and humane ; and 
Jesus and Paul, themselves men of marked spiritual 
strength, might be expected to be in advance of the stand- 
ard of virtue of their time. Accordingly, we find in Paul's 
writings, as in the preserved words of Jesus, a quite com- 
prehensive summary of all that constitutes upright and 
blameless conduct in our own age. Adultery and all 
kindred disorders, murder, private vengeance, enmities, 
hatreds, and retaliations are forbidden, just dealing is 
insisted upon, extortion is censured, and piety and active 
charity are enjoined. 

Paul, like his Master, inherited an exemption from those 
carnal instincts, the excesses of which have eclipsed the 
spiritual vision of man, and dragged him down from the 
angelic heights which he was approaching by his intellect 
and genius to the gross animalism whence he may have 
sprung. But Paul had too much sagacity and knowledge 
of human nature to hold up absolute celibacy as the ideal 
state, which all who would perfect themselves must at- 
tain. 11 The only warning he gave against marriage, from 
which he found it easy to abstain, was based upon the 
cares — incompatible with the high duties of discipleship 
— it would entail, and upon the incongruousness of a rela- 
tion, which the new order of the regenerate world would 
so soon interrupt. 1 * For those who were already wedded, 
he prescribed fidelity and constancy ; and there were cer- 
tain types of character, not deemed wholly incompatible 
with a certain qualified form of godliness, for whom he not 
only permitted, but enjoined marriage. But all that Paul 
has written indicates that he had the same contempt for 
woman in her maternal office that monks, Shakers, and 
other conventional celibates have ever had ; that he failed 
to see a pure affection in the marriage relation, and 
looked upon the tie, out of which the domestic attach- 
ments grow, as an unworthy compromise with instincts 
which the wisest and best men deny and suppress. Out 
of this contempt for woman, and the gross regard of her 
as the servant and convenience of man, sprang the idea, 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 445 

to which he gave frequent expression and emphasis, that 
in the order of society woman was as far below man in 
worth and attributes as man is below the Deity. This 
conception, which he everywhere enforced with a feeling 
alien to all modern courtesy and chivalry, and which indi- 
cates that he was little touched by the tender deference 
and confidence he himself inspired in the hearts of many 
"honorable women," whose characters, conversation, and 
faith so belied his hard theories, prompted several unrea- 
sonable and absurd prescriptions and prohibitions. The 
gifts of inspiration seem to have fallen upon women as 
upon men ; and, in charity and hospitality, women were 
specially distinguished. Paul, in his letter to the Corin- 
thians, seems at first to have yielded to the power of the 
spirit to express itself through the voice of woman, but 
it was with ill grace ; and he will have his prophetess 
veiled, and wearing some badge of her servitude to 
man. 11 But, later in his letter, he declares that it is not 
permissible for a woman to speak in the assembly, and 
in his Epistle to Timothy that he "will not suffer a 
woman to teach or usurp authority over men, but that she 
must be silent." b 

Thus, we see that Paul, besides constructing the creed 
and faith of the Church, undertook its edification and in- 
struction, as the minister and apostle indeed of Jesus, but 
by no means confining himself to Jesus' doctrines, or, 
when agreeing with him in his precepts, repeating them 
upon his authority. As the letters of Paul were read as 
circulars in all the churches, while the works and words 
of Jesus were repeated from lip to ear as a fading and 
already uncertain and disputed tradition, it is easy to un- 
derstand why Paul, and not Jesus, became the supreme 
authority in fixing both the creed and practice of the 
Christian Church. 

By his eloquence, zeal, and imperious temper, and above 
all by a large-minded enterprise, which left the other mis- 
sionaries of Christianity mainly to the narrow theatre of 
Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor, Paul was able to main- 
tain the prestige of his authority and doctrines during his 
lifetime. It is doubtful if Peter and the pillars of the 
Church at Jerusalem would have had the courage to push 

»I. Cor. xi., 5. b I. Cor. xiv., 34; I. Tim. ii., 12. 



446 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

this propagandism outside of the pale of Judaism, if they 
had not been startled and provoked by the boldness and 
success of Paul's proselytism in the Greek and Roman 
provinces. It would even seem, as if they followed Paul, 
more to counteract him and correct his heresies, than with 
an assured confidence, that all the world was to be allowed 
to share the promises of the gospel. But even Paul's 
preaching, as has been seen, was a glorification of Moses 
and of the Jewish policy. He maintained a relationship 
with the see of Jerusalem, whose primacy was necessarily 
recognized ; and for all the traditions of Jesus, of his char- 
acter, his teaching, his works, his death, and his resurrec- 
tion, he was obliged to give all inquisitive neophytes refer- 
ences to the witnesses grouped about Peter and John. 
While he was preaching and founding churches in 
Greece, with large designs of pushing his operations to 
Italy and Spain, emissaries from the twelve apostles se- 
duced his converts in Galatia from the freedom that he 
claimed to be in Christ into bondage to the Jewish law ; 
and in a letter to his friend Timothy he complained pathet- 
ically, that all Asia had fallen away from his faith. a 

After his death, the apostasy widened; and the early 
Church, so far as it was controlled by personal influence 
and the voice of the preacher, inclined more to the creed 
and domination of Peter, than to the counsels and theo- 
ries of Paul. But Paul was able by his learning fully to 
indemnify himself for this temporary eclipse of influence. 
His place in literature had been assured ; and as the oral 
traditions grew doubtful and obscure, and the reverend 
apostles were succeeded by narrow-minded, illiterate, and 
even irreverent priests, whose characters lent no sanction 
to their teachings, the influence of Paul became again 
superior; and finally, when Protestantism arose, appeal- 
ing to interpretation and to the authority of the Chris- 
tian literature, as against the distorted traditions and bor- 
rowed forms preserved in the Church, the Pauline plan of 
salvation became the creed of reformed Christianity, and 
has remained its creed till our own time. 

If Christianity, undoubtedly inspired by the doctrines 
and enthusiasm of Jesus, had had no other literary ex- 
pression than that given to it in the writings of Paul, it 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 447 

would have been a barren dogma, or at the best a dogma 
supplemented by an ethical code, having a standard of 
virtue not materially higher than that which the Jewish 
and the Greek cultus had, before the Christian era, estab- 
lished among the most civilized races. Those rules of 
conduct found in the traditions of Jesus, which his own 
immediate followers did not at once modify or set aside, 
had been largely anticipated by the teachings of the 
wisest of the heathen philosophers, and of the most 
eminent of the Jewish scribes. Then, as now, the world 
did not live according to the rules of its best teachers ; 
and it is probable that popular virtue, like popular intelli- 
gence, was far less diffused among the community of 
men in the first, than it is in the nineteenth century. 

Something else was wanting ; some better reminiscence 
of Jesus than Paul's highest conception of him, not so 
much to teach as to inspire. The exigency was met by 
the advent of a man of dramatic genius, of mystic in- 
sight, capable of emotion and affection, who could not 
contemplate such a character as that of Jesus from a 
merely critical and dogmatic point of view. This was the 
unknown author of the Fourth Gospel. When and where 
he lived and wrote is not known,. though it seems to be 
tolerably well ascertained, that he was of an age later 
than Paul and the twelve apostles. He might have been 
one of the Greek proselytes of the Alexandrian school, 
who had found in Jewish monotheism and the Hebrew 
conception of a pure God — author of the universe, and 
patron of righteousness — so much in accord with the 
teachings and implications of Plato. In his Gospel, he 
always speaks of the Israelites and of their long estab- 
lished national customs just as a native would not, and he 
cannot mention the Passover without explaining that it 
was a "feast of the Jews";" while Paul, borrowing the 
Passover as an illustration, in one of his exhortations to 
his Greek converts of Corinth, does not find it necessary 
to make a similar explanation. 1 ' The evangelist avoids 
mentioning, and sometimes makes palpable mistakes in 
naming, places where incidents in the life of Jesus hap- 
pened, just as a foreigner might do, who was groping 
among localities of which he had no personal knowledge. 

» John ii., 13; vi., 4. b I. Cor. v., 7. 

cjohni.,28, 29, 35, 38, 43; iii-, 23; iv.,5. 45. 54 i vi., 3, 15. 



448 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

It does not seem necessary to suppose that, in writing 
what is now known as the Fourth Gospel, this poet and 
mystic of the new religion had a historic purpose. His 
work is an exposition of Christian doctrine. But he did 
not wish to unfold the Christian ideas in a controversial 
or didactic form. That task had been already sufficiently 
accomplished by Paul. Traces of the Pauline influence 
are everywhere apparent in the production. Indeed, the 
Johannic Gospel would not have been possible, until Paul 
had systematized the Christian faith, and fixed the status 
of Jesus in the divine economy of the universe. It required 
a great man to take a comprehensive view of the work 
and character of Jesus, and none of his personal associates 
seem to have been capable of this. After Paul had done 
it, the task of the writer of the Fourth Gospel became 
comparatively easy. 

The first certain recognition of the Fourth Gospel as 
an extant work seems to have been toward the close of 
the second century, though a portion of the critics have 
zealously contended for a recognition some fifty years 
earlier. It was early imputed to John, the son of Zebedee ; 
and tradition asserted that he wrote it at Ephesus in his 
extreme old age. This- tradition of authorship seems to 
rest upon an indirect claim in the final chapter of the book 
itself — now generally believed not to have formed a part of 
the original work a — upon the evident similarity of style 
between it and the Epistles of the canon, believed also to 
have been written by the same John ; and upon the state- 
ment in the Apocalypse, that the writer of the vision was, 
at the time of its manifestation, John, "a companion in 
tribulation, and in the kingdom and suffering of Jesus in 
the isle of Patmos," b a small island off Ephesus, in the 
vEgean Sea. 

It is credible that the John, characterized in " Acts " 
as "an unlearned and ignorant man," c who seems to 
have always allowed Peter to be spokesman, when they 
together propagated the Gospel, might have written or 
dictated this unique production, called in our Script- 
ures "The Revelation." Its lurid pictures, the monot- 
onous horror of its plagues and torments well accord 
with that truculent spirit, which imprecated fires from 

ajohnxxi., 34. ''Rev. i., 9. c Acts iv., 13. 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 449 

heaven upon the unsympathizing Samaritans ; a while the 
theologic hate, fertile in coarse maledictions that breathe 
through its earlier chapters, — directed, as many compe- 
tent critics have maintained, against our heroic Paul, — 
shows that the seer could never learn, notwithstanding 
the caution of his Master, not to forbid those who were 
casting out devils in other fellowship than his own. b But 
it is simply incredible that the person, who had thus 
attested the inveterate traits of his character, could also 
have written : "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, 
for God is love ; " e The life of God is the light of man, 
and this light illumines every man that is bom, d — senti- 
ments which in spirituality and catholicity are kindred, if 
not superior, to any the same writer has been able to 
impute to Jesus himself. 

There are reasons for allowing the tradition to stand, 
that imputes to Ephesus the origin of the Fourth Gospel. 
It was his beloved Ephesians who had fallen on Paul's 
neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all that they 
should see his face no more. 6 He had preached among 
them two years ; and they, if any among the people of 
Asia, had entered into the large liberty of his faith. f It 
was his beloved Ephesians whom Paul addressed in his 
Epistle as the faithful in Jesus Christ, no more strangers 
and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of 
the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apos- 
tles and prophets, and Jesus Christ the corner-stone, into a 
habitation of God through the Spirit. * Now, it is j ust this 
conception of Jesus and of his system, which this Epistle 
of Paul foreshadows, that the author of the Fourth Gospel 
afterward embodied. He sets forth a habitation of God, 
in which the apostles take precedence of the prophets as 
foundations, and of which Jesus, not Moses, is the corner- 
stone. During Paul's lifetime such views of the exalta- 
tion of Jesus may have been suspected as heretical by 
the Pillar Apostles at Jerusalem ; and, after his death, the 
general defection of Asia seems to have reached even 
Ephesus — the triumphant tone of the Revelator indicat- 

*Lukeix., 54. b Luke ix., 49. c I. John iv., 16. 
d Prologue to Fourth Gospel. c Acts xx., 38. f Acts xviii., 10. 
The Pauline authorship of this Kpistle has been most seriously questioned. It lessens 
the authority of this characterization, if, instead of the work of the master, it is the tribute of 
one of his admiring disciples; but, coming from the latter source, there is no reason to ques- 
tion its truthfulness. 



450 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

ing how completely the seven churches had become entan- 
gled again in the yoke of bondage. But years after the 
death of Paul, after the intolerant seer of Patmos had 
himself passed away, after the idea of the logos, derived 
from the Greek philosophy, had made more comprehensive 
the metaphysical concepts of Christianity, and after the 
controversies, with which the New Testament canon is 
rife, had been composed, at least among the body of 
believers, the Johannic Gospel was demanded, and it came 
forth. Was it the fruit, or was it the cause of the 
reconciliation ? 

In it, the high estimate of Jesus, to which we have seen 
Paul constantly rising, is not abated. It is advanced. 
He, who was to Paul exalted above all principalities and 
powers, and who contained in himself the fulness of 
Deity, shone on the Johannic page as the glory of the 
only begotten of God, full of grace and truth. The call- 
ing of Israel is not denied ; salvation is of the Jews, but 
it is only their pre-emption. The rejection of the Jews 
will not defeat the beneficence of God. The mission of 
Jesus is no longer to save the lost sheep of the house of 
Israel, but to take away the sin of the world. The com- 
mand of Jesus is no longer : Whatever observances the 
scribes and Pharisees, sitting in Moses' seat, prescribe, 
those perform and do. All observances of the law — the 
older national rite of circumcision itself included — are 
become too trivial to mention. Faith has become the end 
of the law for righteousness to the believer in Jesus. 
But, on the other hand, the scribes and Pharisees are not 
denounced as hypocrites doomed to the damnation of hell ; 
nor is the standard of righteousness in the kingdom of 
heaven placed above the capacities of their virtue. As for 
the prestige of Jerusalem in the new order of the Spirit it 
has entirely passed away in a cultus, that neither at Jeru- 
salem nor on Mount Gerizim worships the Father in spirit 
and in truth. 

The eschatology of the Fourth Gospel is quite unlike 
that disclosed in the Synoptics and in the Pauline 
letters. It differs still more from that, which the true 
John of Patmos seemed of all the primitive disciples most 
to have emphasized. The second coming of Jesus was a 
hope too universal, a tenet too fundamental in the Church, 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 45 1 

to be denied at once ; but its whole character is changed. 
It is no longer the Son of Man coming in the clouds, 
with all the holy angels, in the lifetime of his own gen- 
eration — every eye to see his presence gleaming as the 
lightning from the 'east to the west, and all the tribes 
of the earth to mourn because of him. The coming 
again is asseverated, but with uncertain, even equivocal 
meaning. The Spirit will come in my place, Jesus is 
made to say ; and again : / am myself the Spirit. 11 In- 
stead of a scenic showing to the world, he will manifest 
himself to his own, and not to the world ; making his 
abode in the hearts of those who love him. b In the 
last chapter the writer does not contradict the current 
saying, that Jesus had promised that John, already dead, 
should tarry till his coming ; but he virtually says : The 
only coming of Jesus is the advent of the Spirit, and 
that John lived to see. c In the body of the work, what 
that coming really imports is left quite uncertain. The 
writer seems to be holding on to a fading faith. Some- 
times, as in his first Epistle, when he talks about having 
confidence and not being ashamed before him at his com- 
ing, of seeing him as he is, and being like him when he 
shall appear,' 1 and in his Gospel when he puts into Jesus' 
mouth this explicit assurance : " / will see yon again, 
and your heart shall rejoice" e he seems to be declaring 
that the emphatic predictions of the Master must be ful- 
filled. Again, when he talks of the chosen of Jesus being 
indefinitely in the world, but kept from the evil of it 
by the dwelling in them of the spirit of the Father, which 
is the true manifestation of Jesus, we seem to see an 
irrational expectation succumbing to a philosophy of the 
permanent order of the cosmos, or yielding to a natural 
impatience at a long-deferred hope. This uncertain 
tenure of and preparation to surrender a prime article of 
the primitive Christian creed points to a period later than 
the lifetime of Paul, later than the later period of the 
most modern of the Synoptic Gospels. 

After the revered presence of the kinsmen and per- 
sonal friends of Jesus had disappeared from the world, 
the Pauline ideas, which their influence had rigorously 

■ John xiv., 16-18. I» John xiv., 22-24. c John xxi., 20-24. 
d I. John ii. ( 38 ; hi., 2. v John xvi., 22. 



452 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

repressed throughout Asia, would naturally revive. Paul's 
brilliant career was itself a fascinating memory among his 
converts and their children ; and his letters survived, and 
were everywhere read in the assemblies, — the only liter- 
ature of the new era. In that very epoch, when the 
Pauline theology, supported by the memory of his elo- 
quence and the affection of his converts, and appealing to 
the powerful persuasion of his letters, was contending 
against the older creed, with — after the death of the 
twelve — only a tradition to uphold it, the Synoptic 
Gospels seem to have been produced. Their contradic- 
tions are attributable to the circumstance, that they were 
called out as testimonies in the pending controversies and 
disputes of the believers. It was a perfectly legitimate 
literary enterprise, according to the known standard of 
intellectual integrity at the time, for a writer to give an 
exposition of the doctrines of Jesus in the form of a ficti- 
tious sketch of his life. Indeed, the primitive Gospels 
with many of their kind, that have perished, were not at 
all unlike our modern Lives of Jesus, that have abounded 
in the present century, — mere points of view, theories of 
his character and office, worked out with more or less of 
detail. And we note how Paul himself came to charac- 
terize his own summing up the functions of Jesus, as 
" my gospel" and to speak of other views deemed by him 
erroneous, as " another gospel." * 

The early appreciation of the Fourth Gospel was doubt- 
less due to the effect it had in composing controversies and 
giving unity to the faith of the Church, and this effect 
could not have been very much lessened by the knowl- 
edge of its fictitious character. Converts had come into 
the Church from the schools of Greece. With what liter- 
ature shall they be edified ? Tradition had preserved the 
" Sermon on the Mount " and the parables of Jesus, but 
they were mixed up with predictions of the end of the 
world ; and the whole career of the great teacher in Gali- 
lee was compromised with the exorcization of devils. 
Wise words, and not signs and portents, attracted the 
Greek mind. When the sublime enthusiasm of Jesus, 
outlined by the eloquence and philosophy of Paul, had 
been illuminated by the poetic and mystic imagination of 

a Rom. ii., 16; Gal. i., 5-8, 11 ; II. Cor. xi., 4. 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 453 

John, then first the new Christianity became conscious of 
an ideal worthy of its most cultivated converts, and of 
a record fit for a place among the older scriptures of man- 
kind. 

The Greek convert, — Greek in culture, if not in birth, — 
who wrote the Johannic Gospel, evidently deferred to the 
talents, learning, and metaphysics of Paul ; and his work 
shows where he follows and where he supplements his 
forerunner. Like Paul, he has a scheme of the divine 
economy, in which Jesus, whose pre-existence is assumed, 
has a most eminent place. Paul had believed that, in order 
to give Jesus, who was the first-born of the creation, pre- 
eminence, God had committed to him the creation of all 
things visible and invisible; 11 and although this pre-emi- 
nence was so great, that Jesus might without arrogance 
claim equality with God, it was all derived, and, in the 
end, would be restored to the Supreme, who would be all 
in all. b Thus, to the complete divinity of Jesus, there were 
in Paul's mind two important limitations. Though the 
agent of the whole creation, he was himself created ; and 
his honors and supremacy were to be held temporarily, 
and were, in the end, to be surrendered to God. c We 
can see in his own letters how Paul had been borne along 
in the tendencies of his age from a lower to this high con- 
ception; and the larger conception of John — by which 
name we may, without misleading, designate the author of 
the Fourth Gospel — fairly indicates the later age in which 
he wrote. For the latter will not consent to consider Jesus 
a created being, nor indicate any period, however remote, 
when his authority and supremacy shall be surrendered. 
He has adopted from the school of the Neo-Platonists and 
from the Hebrew writer of the Proverbs the idea, that, as 
the process of the creation was by a fiat or word, Jesus 
was the word or wisdom of God, and thus too closely 
allied with the divine essence ever to have been created 
by it, and too essential to its perfection ever to be ab- 
sorbed by it. He says : In the beginning, — that is, from 
the first, — the word was with God, and was God. Being 
essential life, it only could give life to men and all creat- 
ures. In men, the divine life was light, and that light had 
ever been in the world, though not recognized ; for the 

»Col. i., 16. bphil. ii., 6. cl. Cor. xv., 28. 



454 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

world, though made by the word, which was the life of 
men and the light of their spiritual intelligence, knew 
Jiim not. Then this word, thus unrecognized and ineffi- 
cient, because ignored and rejected of men, was incar- 
nated in Jesus, in whom men beheld the glory of the only 
begotten of God, who would give to all that believed on 
his name power to become children of God, being born 
into that relation directly by the will of God. a This au- 
gust being, with God from the beginning, the agent of 
all creation, the light of the world, the life in itself, needs 
no conception, no birth, no infancy, no growing in wis- 
dom and in stature, as the Galilean legend had declared. 
He appears in the world, 

" like the herald Mercury, 
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill." 

John the Baptist, wisest of the prophets, alone of men 
recognizes him as the Son of God, who baptizes with the 
Holy Ghost. b He recognizes his disciples before they 
come to him ; and they welcome him as Son of God and 
king of Israel, and he announces that they shall see heaven 
opened and angels descending to wait upon him. c 

Like Paul, John is well disposed toward the Pharisees, — 
perceives perhaps that they are a sect kindred to the 
Stoics. Early in his story, he endeavors to bespeak a 
favorable consideration for that class, who had so seriously 
provoked the resentment of Jesus, by personating them 
in a character introduced as Nicodemus, "a man of the 
Pharisees, a ruler of the Jews." Nicodemus is timid and 
cautious, as a man high in office and in the esteem of 
fellow-citizens is apt to be ; but he is measurably enlight- 
ened, candid, inquisitive of truth, and readily receptive of 
the mystic ideas which Jesus is made to communicate to 
him. The remonstrances which Jesus encountered from 
the scribes and Pharisees, elders and chief priests, and 
which drew down upon them the most offensive of the 
parables, John puts into the mouth of " the Jews." In 
the conversation with the Samaritan woman, Jesus is made 
to affirm a most narrow view of the divine providence ; for 
he tells her : The Samaritans worship they know not what, 
for salvation comes from the Jews. The writer does not 

a John i., 1-14. b John i., 33, 34. c John i., 50, 51. 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 455 

seem to be aware of Jesus' special antipathy to the Phari- 
sees, nor of his standard of morality that left them outside 
of the kingdom of heaven. The whole Church had evi- 
dently, before the time of this writer, accepted the politic 
ideas of Paul, that the Pharisees, who in their monotheism, 
their exceptional morality, their belief in a divine revela- 
tion, in the soul and its immortality, had a faith in com- 
mon with the new religion, were to be conciliated rather 
than antagonized. For it is perceived that the writer had 
so far compromised his original conviction that salvation 
was of the Jews, as to admit farther on in his work that 
there were other sheep, not of this fold, which the Good 
Shepherd must also bring with him. a 

In vividness of description, in the dramatic naturalness 
of his dialogues, in the consistent and orderly unfolding 
of his great character, the author of the Fourth Gospel 
may justly demand a very high rank among the writers 
of the Christian Scriptures. The marvellous story-telling 
genius of the East, whose earliest productions were the 
idyls of the garden of Eden, of the migrations of the 
patriarchs, and of the checkered fortunes of Joseph — 
surviving even in the tales of the Arabian Nights — has 
yielded nothing to surpass the wedding at Cana, the 
colloquy at Jacob's well, and the raising of Lazarus from 
the dead. 

But, throughout the whole work, the art is less com- 
plete. It is impossible to disenchant the solemn mono- 
logue of the Johannic Jesus of the illusion of inspiration. 
Strung in accord with the human heart, it has rung in 
sympathy with it for seventeen centuries. If it could be 
so disenchanted, it would be confessed that the human 
infirmity betrays itself everywhere in the imperfect crea- 
tion. The dramatic talent does not equal the descriptive 
aptness, nor fulfil the didactic purpose of the writer. 
For though the attempt is made to represent the career 
of Jesus dramatically, to make John the Baptist, the lead- 
ing disciples, Nicodemus, and the Jews speak each in his 
or their own character, they all, as well as Jesus himself, 
express themselves in the peculiar and unmistakable dialect 
of the author of the First Epistle attributed to John, and 
fall inevitably into his mannerisms and platitudes. Let us 

"John x., 16. 



45^ OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

examine this style more closely, and note its peculiar- 
ities. 

An affirmation, sometimes an inconsequential one, is 
repeated. Among very many instances let these be 
noted in which the superfluous statement is indicated by 
italics. "In the beginning was the word, and the word 
was with God, and the word was God. The same was 
in the beginning with God"" "All things were made by 
him, and without Jiim was not any thing made that was 
made!' b " The same came for a witness, to bear witness 
of the light. He was not the light, but was sent to bear 
witness of tlie light. And he confessed, and denied not, 
but confessed: lam not the Christ." c " He that cometh 
from above is above all ; he that is of the earth is earthly, 
and speaketh of the earth ; he that cometh from heaven is 
above all." d "The hour is coming, and now is, when 
the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they 
that hear shall live. The hour is coming when all that 
are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come 
forth." e "This is the Father's will that sent me, that of 
all which he has given me I should lose nothing, but 
should raise it up at the last day ; and this is the will of 
him that sent me, that every one that seeth the Son and 
believeth on him, may have everlasting life ; and I will raise 
him up at the last day." f " Except ye eat the flesh of the 
Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. 
Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal 
life. He that eateth me shall live by me. This is the 
bread that came down from heaven; he that eateth this 
bread shall live forever." s "I am the good shepherd ; the 
good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. / am the 
good shepherd, and I lay down my life for the sheep. " h " The 
Father who sent me, he gave me a commandment what I 
should say, and ivhat I should speak : whatsoever therefore 
I speak, I speak even as the Father said unto me." 1 " That 
which was from the beginning, which we have heard, 
which we have seen with o?tr eyes, which we have looked 
upon, which we have handled of the word of life (for the 
life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, 
and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the 

"John i., 1,2. bjohni.,3,7. cjohni.,20. d John iii., 31. 

e John v., 25-29. f John vi., 39, 40. gjohn vi., 53, 54, 58. 

h John x., 11, 14, 15. i John xii., 49, 50. 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 457 

Father, and was manifested unto us) ; that which we have 
seen and heard declare we unto you." a Here, the asser- 
tion that the word of life, the meaning of the phrase being 
set forth in the first chapter of the Johannic Gospel, was 
seen by us, is made four times, besides the equivalent 
assertion, thrice repeated, that it was manifested to us, 
and that we have heard it, — all in the compass of a single 
sentence. How ill-fitting a vehicle of any really elevated 
sentiment is such clumsy verbiage! "I write no new 
commandment, but the old commandment, which ye had 
from the beginning. The old commandment is the word 
which ye have heard from the beginning'" b " He that 
hateth his brother is in darkness even until now. But 
he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and knoweth 
not whither he goeth, because that darkness has blinded his 
eyes." c "I write unto you fathers, because ye have 
known him that is from the beginning; I write unto you 
young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. 
I have written unto you fathers, because ye have known Jam 
that is from the beginning ; I have written unto you young 
men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth 
in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one." d 

Feeble and undisciplined minds are apt to seek to 
strengthen their asseverations by superfluous affirmations. 
Such expletives as, " That is so" " There is no mistake 
about it," and other even more reprehensible phrases, 
betray a depraved taste, but are never used by good 
writers, except with the obvious purpose of portraying 
a vulgar character. The Johannic writer has not been 
able to avoid literary faults even of this character. Thus, 
having affirmed in his prologue that all things were made 
by the Divine Word, he compromises the grand idea by 
this feeble iteration, "and without him was not any thing 
made that was made." e He makes his hero interject into 
the delightful disclosures of mansions in the Father's 
house, prepared for believers, this impertinence, which 
we almost recognize as a coarse phrase of the street : 
"If it were not so, I would have told you." l 

There are the strongest reasons for believing that this 
was not the style of Jesus. It is incompatible with the 

a I. John i., 1-3. b I. John ii., 7. c I. John ii., 10, 11. 
<1 1. John ii., 13, 14. ejohni.,3. ' John xiv., 2. 



45§ OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

dignity of his historic character. It is farthest removed 
from that terse, epigrammatic, and sententious speech, 
which none of the artless narrators of his life could have 
invented. Lastly, we happen to know that such weak 
tautology, such efforts to eke out an incomplete concep- 
tion by the duplication and triplication of a meagre outfit 
of epithets and figures, would have been specially offen- 
sive to him; since he had classed simplicity and direct- 
ness of speech among the cardinal virtues, and had 
declared that whatever is superadded to a naked affirma- 
tion or negation " comcth of evil!' a 

It is another peculiarity of the author's mind to offer 
irrelevant and inconsequential reasons for propositions 
which seem to stand upon observation, intuition, argu- 
ment, or authority. These instances will be remem- 
bered : " He [the Father] will show him [the Son] 
greater works than these." Why? " That ye may mar- 
vel." b " He hath given him power to execute judgment 
also, because he is the Son of Many" Why is judgment 
a function of the Son of Man ? Though in the same 
conversation, from which these words are reported, Jesus 
says: "I receive not honor from man," d he is made to 
give us a reason why the Father has committed all judg- 
ment to him, — " that all men should honor the Son even 
as they honor the Father."* "Greater works than these 
[miracles] shall ye do, because I go to my Father." 1 Why 
should his power to confer upon his disciples miraculous 
gifts be greater away from them than with them ? When 
the Son of Man shall come (the second time), he will, he 
says, reprove the world of sin, because they disbelieved 
in him; but why of judgment, because the prince of this 
world is judged? Or how reprove the world of right- 
eousness as well as of sin; and, if the g world is to be 
reproved of righteousness, why so, because Jesus goes 
to his Father and his disciples see him no more ? 

Another peculiarity of the Johannic style is the fre- 
quent recurrence in it of mixed metaphors. We have 
seen how, in the philosophic prologue, the life becomes 
light, and the light a man, and how both the word and 
the light are successively credited with the work of crea- 

•Matt. v.,37. bjohnv.,20. c John v., 27. d John v., 41. 

ejohnv.,23. i John xiv., 12. S John xvi., 9-11. 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 459 

tion. It is not unlikely that the author so far deferred to 
the traditional reputation of Jesus as an allegorist, as 
to have attempted his manner in the so-called parable 
of the Good Shepherd. It is certainly far from being 
rhetorically a successful attempt. The writer is too in- 
tent upon his didactic purpose, too much involved in his 
own dominant and mystic modes of thought. He cannot 
surrender himself to the illusions of his own fancy, or 
rather the illusions of a feeble fancy have none of the 
vitality and naturalness which characterize the creations 
of Jesus. It is no parable at all. The Good Shepherd, 
instead of maintaining his role, degenerates into the door 
by which the sheep enter the fold, reversing the conduct 
in "Midsummer-Night's Dream" of the wall that insists 
upon taking a part in the dialogue. In developing the 
dogma of the sole doctrinal authority of Jesus, the whole 
story, without plot or catastrophe, sobers into a sermon. 
In the parable of the vine and the branches, less was 
attempted, a mere simile ; and, accordingly, the chapter is 
worked out with less pretension and more skill. 

A rudeness of style sometimes degenerates into rude- 
ness of thought. Thrice, in the first Johannic Epistle, the 
historic gentleness of the evangelist is compromised by 
the direct imputation, that certain persons who pretend 
to love God are liars* In the Gospel, this infelicity of 
speech is put into the mouth of Jesus himself: " If I 
should say I know him not, I should be a liar like unto 
you," — the Jews to whom he was speaking. 6 

Sometimes, contradictions break the consistency of the 
revelations. Thus, Jesus is made to say : " If I bear wit- 
ness of myself, my witness is not true " ; c and not long 
afterwards to declare : " Though I bear record of myself, 
my record is true"; d and again to return to his former 
declaration : " If I honor myself, my honor is nothing." 
So, too, he says: "For the Father judge th no man, but 
hath committed all judgment to the Son," though he had 
already announced: "I judge no man," f and afterwards 
had repeated that statement, with the explanation that he 
"came not into the world to judge the world, but to save 
the world." g 

» I. John ii., 4, 22 ; iv., 20. b John viii., 55. "John v., 31. <l John viii., 14. 
e John viii., 54. f John viii., 15. Kjohn xii., 47. 



460 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

Besides these specific blemishes, we find in this compo- 
sition and in the scriptures of the same author, a paucity 
of ideas, with a wealth of sentiment, — much to excite and 
soothe devout feeling, little to interest and employ the 
critical understanding. A mystic, delicate, and exalted 
sentiment, couched in epigrammatic terseness and simplic- 
ity, as it sometimes is, is too often repeated and explained 
until its beauty is marred and its impressive force abated. 
The writer is always hopelessly illogical and diffuse ; and, 
though some of his descriptions are so pathetic that the 
very trivialities of detail intensify their naturalness, and 
though some of his ideas are so grand that repetition 
deepens their significance, it cannot be asserted that, in 
the long controversies which Jesus is represented to have 
held with the Jews, his own part is so well sustained, as 
to merit what must be taken as a self-encomium, — " Never 
man spake like this man." a In the more confidential dis- 
courses to his friends attributed to Jesus, we find a very 
few primal ideas, made the foundation of a mystic philos- 
ophy and theology entertained by the author, strung upon 
a thread of prolix talk, full of unintelligible transitions 
and perplexing contradictions, in no logical connection or 
recognizable order of thought. 

Did Jesus utter these discourses of the Fourth Gospel, 
and did his disciple and intimate friend become so pos- 
sessed with admiration for his Master as to adopt his 
peculiar philosophy, together with his mannerisms of style 
and methods of ratiocination and expression ? To assert 
this is to account in one way for the similarity in style, 
philosophy, and modes of thought betwixt the discourses 
of Jesus in the Johannic Gospel and the writer's own lan- 
guage in the prologue and in the Epistles. Who, then, 
was the Jesus of the parables, of the Sermon on the 
Mount, and of the terse and striking conversations of the 
Synoptics ? To impute to Matthew or to Peter or to 
Luke the striking apothegms, pregnant with meaning, of 
the first three Gospels, is to find in those men a grade 
of genius, which their simple narratives indicate to be 
quite beyond even their comprehension. No obscure dis- 
ciple could have first uttered the " beatitudes," or such 
germs of transcendent virtue as "Love your enemies" 

»John vii., 46. 






INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 461 

" Do good to the evil and unthankful" "He that doeth the 
will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother." 

On the other hand, if it be asked, Could an obscure 
disciple originate such thoughts as these : " God is a 
spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in 
spirit and in truth" ; " Except a man be born again, he 
cannot enter the kingdom of God," we must remember 
that the disciple was only obscure because he imputed to 
another the work that would have made him more famous 
than Paul. One who had read Paul's letters, who lived 
after the sublime ethics of Jesus had been informed by 
the theology of that great apostle, and harmonized with 
the philosophic speculations of Plato, might have uttered 
every sentiment imputed to Jesus in the Johannic Gospel. 
Indeed, what the writer could himself do in the enuncia- 
tion of pure and profound sentiments he has disclosed in 
writings avowedly his own. In his prologue, he declares : 
" There is a light that lighteth every man that cometh into 
the world" ; and in his Epistle : " God is love, and he that 
dwelleth i?i love dwelleth in God, and God in kim." The 
writer has not been able to rise to a higher grade of think- 
ing than this, in any revelation he has imputed to Jesus. 
Having found, — as it were, in situ, — in the mind of this 
mystic poet, specimen fragments like these of his intel- 
lectual vein, why should not all the ore he exhibits — so 
unmistakably homogeneous — be accredited to the same 
quarry ? 

Of this we can be assured, that the Sermon on the 
Mount and the parables did not emanate from the same 
mind that originated the illustrations of the vine and 
branches, and of the Good Shepherd, and the discourse 
beginning: "Let not your heart be troubled." For, if 
these last are in the style of Jesus, some other hand has 
improved the Sermon on the Mount. It is derogatory 
to the memory of Jesus to suspect this. The probability 
is much greater that the mind that produced the Epistles 
and the Johannic prologue produced also the Johannic 
discourses. It is impossible to trace any of the predomi- 
nant intellectual traits of Jesus disclosed in his conversa- 
tions in the Synoptic Gospels in the dogmatic disputant 
of the Fourth Gospel, who is incapable of imaginative 
creation, the arrangement of whose thoughts is as incoher- 



462 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

ent as the conclusions of his arguments are inconsequen- 
tial, and whose meagre types and illustrations so inade- 
quately serve the completeness of his expression, that he 
seems compelled to repeat them, and enfeebles them in 
the repetition. 

Jesus' style is allegoric. He illustrates his ideas by 
pleasant apologues. John's style is typical. Certain 
terms of sense stand for him as representative of certain 
spiritual states ; and, like Swedenborg's types, they shift 
so suddenly and so arbitrarily, that it is not easy to follow 
their metamorphoses. Thus, the word and the spirit be- 
come impersonations and powers of creation and genera- 
tion. Life abstracts itself from its accredited sense, as 
the condition of living organisms, and becomes one of 
the original uncreated essences. But it will not keep its 
own estate, but is changed into light in the soul of man, 
and, shining into the opposing darkness of the world, 
becomes a person, the person who has created the world, 
already made by the word. So that, unless there have 
been two creations and two creators, light and the word 
are one, and were made flesh in Jesus, whose office it is 
to give to all that receive and believe in him the power 
to become sons of God, and to inherit eternal life. But 
no will of man determines who shall receive the incar- 
nated light and word which give light. Only God's will 
designates such, and gives them to Jesus to become the 
recipients of his grace and salvation. In this scheme, 
faith is everything. But faith is by no means a matter of 
will or choosing on the part of the believer, since no man 
can come to Jesus but by the Father's drawing ; and no 
man can even say that Christ has come in the flesh but 
by the power of God in him. The world is the kingdom 
of evil and of darkness. History is nothing, nature 
nothing. There is no history but the history of the 
advent of Jesus to the world, to save those that believe. 
All that is of consequence in the divine dealings with one 
people are the intimations God had given them in prophe- 
cies, in a typical worship, and in the providences of their 
national history of the great salvation ; and, that salva- 
tion having come, those things that signified it have 
become as shadows. 

This vision of all history and all providence through the 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 463 

single medium of a spell-bound faith is the inspiration 
of the Epistles ascribed to John, and the controlling influ- 
ence, under which the prologue to the Fourth Gospel was 
written. The controversy of the new religion with the 
conservative Judaism, out of which it sprung, the record 
of which is left to us in the canonical Epistles and in 
fragments of the preaching of the apostles and first mis- 
sionaries in the book of the "Acts," John puts into the 
mouth of Jesus himself. Day after day, he is represented 
as standing in the temple at Jerusalem and pleading with 
the Jewish hierarchy — the official heads of the estab- 
lished Church — for recognition as the counterpart and 
fulfilment of their Biblical revelation. 

Like the other evangelists, however, this one in no way 
offends us by extraordinary pretensions. He does not 
represent that the discourses which he imputes to Jesus 
were particularly successful or even intelligible as efforts 
of persuasive oratory. On the contrary, he declares that 
for a considerable time his own brothers were quite averse 
to the claims of Jesus to be a prophet ; a and that the effect 
of one of his most spiritual and profound discourses was 
to offend a large part of his adherents, so that they aban- 
doned his faith. 1 ' He discloses that many of Jesus' expla- 
nations, which seem quite comprehensible to us, were not 
understood by the twelve, who repeated them and pressed 
him to make them more intelligible. Finally, he declares 
that, near the end, Jesus himself, speaking of these dis- 
courses, admitted that they were proverbs which had not 
been well understood, and promised that, in that day, — that 
is, of his second coming, — he " will no longer speak to his 
disciples in parables, but will show them plainly of the 
Father." c 

But what must be said of the marvellous success of this 
production, and of the eager interest and satisfaction 
with which its revelations have ever been cherished by all 
devout minds in the Christian Church ? This success can- 
not be denied. Toward the close of the second century, 
the Gospel of John began to be noticed by writers of 
the time ; and its publication could not long have ante- 
dated that period. It was too striking and powerful a 
work to remain long unnoticed ; and it soon took its fore- 

" John vii., 5. I) John v., 44-66. cjohn xvi., 25. 



464 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

most place, as the authentic and complete life of Jesus. 
Among scholars and the better informed Christians, its 
fictitious character was doubtless at first well understood ; 
but there were many circumstances which tended to estab- 
lish for it an historic reputation. 

The incidents of the life of Jesus up to his appearance 
at Jerusalem were exceedingly obscure, and much disputed 
about among his adherents. The wholesale miracle-work- 
ing in Galilee attributed to him, as has been already shown, 
did not seem to have been credited by Paul, nor by the 
chief apostles. The account of these miracles, that ulti- 
mately became written, seemed to have been kept in 
abeyance till after the death of the companions and confi- 
dential friends of Jesus. With Paul, perhaps with his 
compatriots, Peter and James, the essential thing was 
Jesus come in the flesh as the Messiah, crucified by the 
malice of men, glorified through resurrection as the Son 
of God, and as the saviour of the world through faith. 
Dwelling on this grand scheme of his life as the exposition 
of the wisdom and power of God unto salvation, the inci- 
dents of his history and the traits of his human character 
became insignificant, — a theme for the idle gossip of the 
curious and the subtle fancies of the poetic imagination to 
employ themselves upon at will. 

The removal of the discussion over Jesus, who he was, 
where he was born, where he lived, and what he had 
done as a man, to a different public from that, that had 
seen and heard him, — that is, to the communities of Asia 
Minor, Greece, Egypt, Syria, and Rome, — favored the in- 
troduction of marvellous legends on the one hand, and fan- 
ciful speculations on the other hand, into the traditions of 
his career. This process was all the easier, in that, during 
the first century, great political changes were going on, 
which finally obliterated the Jewish state, destroyed its 
monuments, its temples, and its wealth, interrupted the 
culture of its people, and arrested the production of its 
literature ; so that, when enthusiastic disciples went about 
Asia and Europe, telling of stupendous things, that had 
been lately happening in Galilee and Jerusalem, there was 
no body of intelligent people left in the scene of the won- 
ders to confirm or to contradict the report. If now wholly 
exceptional events should be alleged to have lately hap- 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 465 

penecl in Belgium, in Scotland, or in Ohio, reference 
would be had at once to the intelligent people of the 
vicinage, to know if such events had occurred. The 
legends of primitive Christianity obtained credence and 
currency, in part, because political revolutions had ren- 
dered a like reference impossible. There must have been 
a period, not long after the crucifixion, when Christendom 
knew less of the life of Jesus, than it knows now after 
eighteen centuries. In that very conjuncture, a little 
too late for any story to be either verified or contradicted, 
ages too early for any historical responsibility to be felt, 
or historical method or accuracy to be possible, this Fourth 
Gospel appeared, and the world received, cherished, and 
gave it credence. This is not surprising. The dramatic 
Henry the Eighth of Shakspeare is a more real person 
to the English race, than the little-known, much-disputed- 
about, historic Henry. Very vivid, very authentic must 
that history be, which will be able to efface the heroic 
glamour which Shakspeare's genius has thrown around 
the reign of nine English kings. Critical research and 
the sober judgment of scholars have labored in vain to 
obliterate in the gallery of fame the beautiful myths of 
William Wallace and of William Tell. In many respects, 
the fictitious Jesus of John is a more interesting charac- 
ter than the real Jesus. 

The place that the Johannic biographer obtained among 
his collaborators at first he has retained to the present 
age. The preacher, the theological writer of to-day, draws 
his picture of the person of Jesus from the delineations 
of John ; and, when he undertakes to set forth what Jesus 
taught, he will take two passages from the Johannic idyl, 
where he will take one from the synoptic narratives. 
Even those preachers and theologians whose critical judg- 
ment has succumbed to the arguments which recent 
scholarship has accumulated against the historic charac- 
ter of the Fourth Gospel continue thus to support its 
authority. 

Why, in spite of such faults of rhetorical execution, and 
the fact that the dramatic design of the writer is so pal- 
pably unfulfilled in the achievement of his work, has his 
composition gained this high estimation ? It is because, 
in this sketch, defective as it is in a literary point of 



466 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

view, he has given to faith what an eloquent and devout 
preacher happily characterizes as "the heart of Jesus''' ; 
because, like a man of genius, he has been able to con- 
ceive of an ideal person, not bounded by the limitations 
or marred by the defects, that robbed the historic per- 
sonage of that supreme consideration and that complete 
success which belong to nothing human. All large 
human lives are capable of such treatment. As the 
portrait of the great artist is a truer delineation of a 
human countenance in its best capacities of expression, 
than is the photograph of the mechanic, who has caught 
the face in one of its aspects of pettiness or weakness, 
so the ideal life is sometimes truer than the real one. 

The Jesus of the Galilean tradition was born in poverty. 
He grew in stature and in wisdom. He said wise words 
and did great works, but he was despised, derided, rejected. 
Few believed on him ; and, in an attempt to win the chief 
city of his nation to his cause, he fell under suspicion, was 
arrested, tried, condemned, and summarily executed by the 
government, — the populace being incensed against him, 
and his own disciples taking oaths that they had never 
known him. 

John's Jesus alights on the earth as one sent from 
heaven. A dove, which is the Holy Ghost, descends upon 
him. The greatest of the prophets and all good men rec- 
ognize him as Son of God and King of men. He dies 
indeed ; but he dies because he lays down his life, that he 
may take it again, and, coming back glorified, may give 
eternal life in heaven to those who have adhered to him. 
John's Jesus talks much of himself, of his estate before he 
lived in the world, of the glory that awaits him in the 
after-life, when he shall return to the Father, who had 
sent him, and when he will munificently share that glory 
with his humble followers. How assuring and consoling 
must have been such revelations of the heavenly state, 
and of its compensations for all the toils, sufferings, mock- 
eries, and persecutions of the primitive disciples ! How 
precious in all ages to the believer's heart must have been 
those soothing words he is believed to have uttered : 
" Let not your heart be troubled., Ye believe in God ; 
believe also in me. In my Father's house are many man- 
sions. I go to prepare a place for you." In all the Syn- 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 467 

optics, we cannot find anything more pathetic than these 
words attributed to Jesus by Luke: "Fear not, little flock ; 
for it is your Father s good pleasure to give you the king- 
dom.'' a The Fourth Gospel is full of such tender assur- 
ances. It is not eloquent. It is not rhetorically artistic. 
It abounds in feeble platitudes. It is monotonous with 
a phraseology, that were it less venerable would become 
offensive. There is no wealth of illustration in its meagre 
symbols, which so frequently change into other symbols 
in defiance of all correct rules. But it is confidential, 
familiar, and affectionate. We are ashamed to repeat 
even to ourselves, much more to write, the incoherent 
murmurings of our deepest sentiments, — the endearing 
epithets we bestow on those we love. A scanty vocab- 
ulary, the same old homely epithets, pregnant with the 
heart's deepest experiences, serve well enough for 
vehicles of the ever new affection, of which the critical 
understanding takes no cognizance. 

John's contribution to the new scriptures was like the 
Psalmist's contribution to the older scriptures. Until the 
tender sentiment to and from God found expression in 
the temple songs, what was the Jehovah of the law and 
the prophets but a stern judge or a jealous partisan? 
Until John found and touched the heart of Jesus, what 
was he to the world but an impractical moralist, or a 
wrathful king taking vengeance on his enemies ? l) 

John's work was a more complete idealization of Jesus 
than Paul's. Paul would not go to the companions and 
kinsmen of his deified Master to learn about his life and 
sayings. The Jesus after the flesh, of whom they could 
tell him, might eclipse the grand vision of him which he 
believed the Holy Ghost had revealed to him. But Paul 
was too much of a scholastic and metaphysician to be 
capable of a really poetic idealization. That was the 
great work of John. 

John's free handling of the life of Jesus, though it was 
bold, was for Christianity its greatest service. It was the 
beginning of a treatment which made the new faith ca- 
pable of universality and permanence. His life, says the 
fervent evangelist, is the light of men! Behold the Lamb 
of God, that taketh away the sin of the world ! We 

Luke xii., 32. b Luke xix., 27. 



468 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

beheld his glory as of the only begotten Son of God, full 
of grace and truth ! John was the forerunner and inspirer 
of all devout souls, — souls that have worn out enfeebled 
bodies in the sublime ecstasies of their love and devotion. 
Of his order are Fenelon and Madame Guyon, Tauler and 
Baxter. 

If we had only the matter-of-fact annalists of Galilee to 
tell us of Jesus, Christianity, instead of being an inspiring 
and vital faith that puts man in relation with an ideal and 
invisible world, would have been a superstitious Millerism, 
ever distraught with the coming end of the world, and 
employing the interval of waiting for a tediously delayed 
catastrophe in vain efforts to make practical ethical rules 
repugnant alike to natural instincts and social laws. 

If we had only the metaphysical conceptions of Jesus, to 
which Paul attained, — a Jesus playing his rigid role in a 
prescribed and fatal plan of salvation, leaning backward 
into the remote ages to clasp the hand of Moses, and to 
adjust himself to the caprices and jealousies of Israel's 
national God, — the fruition would have been a dogmatic 
Protestantism, quoting and splitting texts, the dreary 
predestinarianism of Jonathan Edwards, the jejune moral- 
ities and casuistries of the Jansenists. In the freedom of 
the spirit, out of which all serious doubt and all the 
breadth of modern thinking upon matters pertaining to 
God and the soul have grown, John has put to flight all 
the quoters, the literalists, the dogmatists, and the formal- 
ists, and initiated a handling of the facts of the origin and 
development of the Christian ideas, under which they are 
able to adapt themselves to the widening intelligence and 
expanding civilization of the world. 

If Jesus may be likened to the fountain of that new 
element in civilization called Christianity, — the mountain 
lake into which it poured as rain from heaven, and 
welled up from springs deep in the earth, — Paul and 
John are the twin rivers flowing side by side like the 
Tigris and Euphrates, that have poured the accumulating 
volume of its waters to the sea. Paul has interpreted the 
ideas of Jesus in terms of thought, John in terms of feel- 
ing. The constructive genius of Paul has taken the wild 
cry, — the fire-alarm of John the Baptist in the wilderness : 
"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," echoed 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 469 

after him through the cities of- Galilee by Jesus and his 
twelve messengers, — the whole burden of the primitive 
gospel, — and elaborated from it a complicated plan of 
salvation, a metaphysical scheme that harmonizes in a 
certain way the aspects of history, and gives a certain 
consistency to our conceptions of God and his providence. 
The ethical rules of Jesus, which his auditors could not 
receive, which seemed to them like the cutting off a right 
foot, the plucking out a right eye, John has made a de- 
light, by kindling a devout enthusiasm, and by inspiring 
the ardor of a human love, responsive to the divine love. 
But what these highly endowed minds have achieved in 
the development of the Christian c?iltus is less valuable 
for us in the results than in the methods. They best 
learn of Paul and John, who, not accepting as finalities 
their inferences and conclusions, in their free spirit and 
with their broad sense enlarge and interpret the narrow 
facts. The value and permanence of Christianity as a 
religion is that it is capable of this idealization. It can 
only endure, if its creed does not cramp and imprison its 
spirit. 

But as the Sadducees quoted the authority of Moses to 
deny the hope of immortality, as the Pharisees adhered 
to a worship of sacrifices against Jesus' idea of a worship 
of righteousness, as the Ebionite Christians and the "pillar 
apostles" set their narrow salvation of the Jews against 
Paul's calling of the Gentiles, so do the literalists of the 
Papal and Protestant schools to-day protest against all 
new interpretations of old formulas of faith made neces- 
sary both by the expanded intelligence and deeper piety 
of the age. Paul called the Church the body of Christ. a 
But a body lives only by the death of the living cells of 
which it is built. Not the gross mass alone, but the 
most delicate and vital organs — lungs, heart, brain, and 
nervous fluids — are involved in the decay and reconstruc- 
tion. When the organism has lost the power to vitalize 
and assimilate to its structure and functions new aliments, 
it has ceased to be alive. So the Church, — Christianity 
as represented in the minds and spirit of its votaries, — 
when it can no longer assimilate into its faith the most 
comprehensive thoughts and deepest insight of capacious 

• I. Cor. xii., 20, 27; Eph. iii., 6; iv., 12; Col. i., 18. 



4/0 OPINIONS AND CHARACTER OF JESUS 

minds, or into its charity -and modes of activity the most 
daring and revolutionary projects of reform, has ceased 
not only to lead, but to live. 

Primitive Christianity, when interrogated by the inquisi- 
tive spirit of man, had an answer uttered from the lips of 
Jesus and of Paul, which seemed to solve, both on its prac- 
tical and philosophic side, the riddle of human existence. 
At least, the answer served well enough for a petty and 
passing world lying in terrible proximity to the dim vaults 
of the underworld beneath it, and the near throne of an 
anthropomorphic God just above it. It serves less well 
for an infinitely expanded cosmos and a Supreme Ordainer, 
whose large plans and vast purposes, hinted at in a more 
closely studied nature, have become past finding out. But 
the inquisitive spirit of man, like the ancient Sphinx, still 
propounds its question ; and Christianity must answer it, 
or confess that it is not sent of God, and so die out of 
the reverence and obedience of the world. What is this 
overture of Religion to divide with Science the domain of 
knowledge but a confession that the prevalent form of 
religion cannot answer the Sphinx's question. Neither 
Religion nor Science can surrender the universality of 
empire without abdicating. If the facts of religion are 
realities, if they are not falsehoods or illusions, they are 
elements of knowledge, and capable of statement in the 
terms of the science to which they belong. On the other 
hand, Science cannot claim exemption from the dominion 
of the moral sense ; and all knowledge is nugatory that 
does not show men how best to live. Religion cannot 
be divorced from Science ; nor will any decree, however 
judicial or authoritative, ever compel them to live apart, 
girding at and recriminating each other. 

But it is on the side of morality, as well as on the 
side of intelligence, that the failure of help and guidance 
has been exhibited. When Jesus was on the mountain- 
top, receiving the homage of the great shades of the 
older prophets, there was brought to his disciples in the 
valley below, a man possessed with a devil, and they 
could not cast him out. a So, now, when the disciples 
are occupied in paying divine honors to the author of 
their faith, offering him the adoration of prophets, poets, 

a Luke ix., 40. 



INFLUENCE OF PAUL AND JOHN 47 1 

and sages, there are brought to them the devils of war, 
of poverty, of intemperance, of lust, and of slavery, and 
the disciples cannot cast them out. Heretics devise the 
temperance pledge, and prick the conscience of legis- 
lators with a vivid recital of the cruelties of slavery, 
till they decree its abolition ; unchurched rationalists 
build upon old despotisms free and popular governments, 
while atheists and agnostics agitate to supplant the 
oppression and competition of the social and industrial 
order with the veritable kingdom of heaven preached 
and practised by Jesus, but contemptuously discontinued 
and denied by his official successors. Instead of a god- 
speed for their beneficent work, these secular reformers 
are rebuked by the modern Johns, because they follow not 
with them. 

It is told that messengers came once to Jesus, and 
asked him : " Art thou he that should come, or do we look 
for another?" to whom he replied : Behold the tilings I do. 
The blind receive their sight, the lame zvalk, the lepers arc 
cleansed, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the 
gospel preached to them}" To the organized Christianity of 
our day, the same question is propounded : Art thou the 
last evangel of truth and good, or must we look for 
another ? It must give place to another, unless it, too, can 
point to its miraculous and beneficent works. It must be 
able with truth to declare : I am bearing the light of intelli- 
gence into the dark corners of delusion and superstition; 
by my healing touch, the disabled in the struggle for life are 
made to keep abreast of the strong and cunning ; by my 
sanitary lessons, the moral and physical diseases, that spoil 
the brief lives of men, have been cleansed ; dead enthusi- 
asms, dead hopes, and dead heroisms have been raised to 
life by my inspirations ; and the gospel of genuine peace 
and good will has cheered the fainting hearts of the poor. 

a Luke ix., 49. b Matt, xi., 2-6. 



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